I am attending the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2011, courtesy of the student scholarship program organized by Leslie Bishko. I have finally navigated to my motel room and my primary instincts are clear: make coffee and write. Anything.
I have slightly more motivation than just being awkwardly talkative, and it stems from some resentment (something that actually motivates me alarmingly frequently). It sounds negative, but lets pretend I am transforming it into the positive - pro-activity! Typically I am good at navigating, but today I committed some serious sins against that art by a) forgetting to print a map, as well as b) starting to walk without orienting myself first. I walked in all sorts of wrong directions for 40 minutes, saddled with my duffel and laptop, which I cursed all sorts of obscenities at in my head. So, I am determined to make this luggage choice worthwhile, and document the cuss out of this trip.
The best thing about being lost are the accidental scenic routes, or forging your own routes (my recommendation is to first ward off the timidity you might feel in a new place, and to blast through wherever you go as if you are the Bomberman himself). I was certainly thinking about who I would whine to about this experience first (It's all of you! Viva la internet.) but I also managed to bumble past almost every building I plan to visit later on. I like to think this is similar to my creative process, that there is a lot of awkward bumbling initially but eventually it gets tuned down to an efficient process. Considering the walk from my room to the museum of civilization is 45 minutes, I think it will be my calf muscles getting the tuning done.
Now that I have exhausted my whining I'll move on to some actual content. I managed to see the 'Short Competition 1' screening. I was surprised at how much the content varied, there was really a huge range of things from high school films to seasoned professionals, promotional work to experimental. There were a few works that stood out to me particularly in technique. Yoshihisa Nakanishi's Many Go Round employed 2D animation cut out of paper to transform it to 3D, and then further it into a 3D tesselation. I also enjoyed Alexander Gelnner's MANNIMANN and Alexandra Hetmerova's Swimming Pool which both had unique, strong narratives and a bold but simple aesthetic of lines and bright colors on black. Their stories could not have been more different in theme and atmosphere, so seeing these together really demonstrated the flexibility of visuals when paired with a narrative.
Tomorrow will be very busy, with many more screenings to scramble too, as well as some panels and artist talks thrown in as well.
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