24/09/2003

The winner at the Cartoon Forum in Varese is a Frenchwoman. The first work by the young Sandra Desmazières, Sans queue ni tête, came away with the Golden Cartoon Prize, the film’s second award after it was victorious at the Espinho Festival in 2002. The story is about a chaotic day filled with routine tasks and boredom, made with drawings painted on paper. It is produced by the High School of Decorative Arts (the ENSAD) and with the Golden Cartoon prize comes the cash grant of €15,000 given by the Media Programme, which organises the Forum in collaboration with RAI Fiction, the Lombardy Region, the Municipality, the Province and the Varese Trade of Commerce.

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This success reflects well not just on the director, who will soon be starting on a new and ambitious project, but it is also good for the Festival, now in its 14th edition, (September 17-20). More than 800 participants gathered in the Lombardy city to discuss the world of the cartoon, including more than 100 broadcasters and 150 investors, searching for new ideas and stories to put in the TV schedules for the upcoming seasons. There were a large number of entries from the British, with 21 projects on show, 10 of which gained a slot in the Top 24 of the most popular films screened at the Forum cinemas. Also appearing in that list were Germs by the French company Futurikon, with 113 investors packing the theatre, and Monster Allergy by the Italian Rainbow with 73 investors going to see it.
The Cartoon Forum has once again shown that it is an important event not to miss, especially as it is held a month before Mipcom in Cannes, which is scheduled for October this year. The Forum is certainly proving to be a venue for new and interesting collaborations to be started or for new programmes to be tested. So, the next appointment for the Cartoon Forum will be from September 22 to 26, 2004 in Santiago di Compostela.

(Translated from Italian)