Annecy: Quirino Awards Will Draft White Paper on Ibero-American Animation
ANNECY, France—The Quirino Awards will draft a white paper for Ibero-American animation, the event’s promoter José Luis Farias announced in Annecy.
According to Farias, the idea is to update, consolidate and catalog vital statistics from the region’s animation industries, including information on ongoing animation projects. “There’s no exhaustive radiography of the Ibero-American animation industry so far. And this white paper could be a foundation stone to build many things around,” Farias told Variety.
Quirino is looking for backers for the project and is in talks with a number of government bodies, lobbies and institutes. The 2nd Quirino Awards will run April 5-6 on the Canary island of Tenerife.
Farias was accompanied by Tenerife Film Commission strategy consultant Zulay Rodríguez, who outlined the Canary Islands’ attractive 40% tax rebate for potential partners and investors, and José Iñesta, the director of Mexican animation confab Pixelatl, who announced that the event’s next edition, taking place Sep. 4-8, will host a panel devoted to women and production in the animation industry, sponsored by Quirino and Acción Cultural AC/E, a Spanish culture promotion platform.
Some of the main prizes at the 1st Quirino Awards included Carlos Carrera’s “Ana & Bruno” (best feature), Juan Pablo Zaramella’s “The Tiniest Man in the World” (best TV series) and Alberto Vázquez’s “Decorado” (best short).
Along with prizes, the Ibero-American event has two focal points: a co-production market, which last April hosted 350 B2B meetings from 20 different countries; and a symposium, which includes presentations of academic papers—an uncommon initiative for an animation confab.
The Quirino Awards have ben launched at a promising time for Ibero-American animation. A new generation of emerging filmmakers, whp have a vocational passion for animation, are helping to power up production as its cost plunges. Film institutes, festivals and funding bodies are showing more interest in animation, extending financial lifelines such as Ibermedia’s recent announcement it was doubling its development support for animation, or the Brazilian Minister of Culture creation of a R$15 million ($4 million) annual investment line, split equally between five animated features.
Also, highly anticipated ambitious productions or projects are notching up robust pre-sales (Fabiano Gullane and Walter Salles’ “Noah’s Ark”) or international co-production pacts (“Escape to India,” from Juan José Campanella’s Mundoloco).
There’s also the knock-on effect of Disney-Pixar’s “Coco,” the first Pixar feature with a non-white main character, which could spur global interest in Ibero-American culture and iconography, as well as a renewed pride in local culture from the region’s animators, and a conviction from international financiers that movies will embrace national culture can be all the more international. “Coati,” a celebration of the Amazonian landscape and wildlife, was acquired for international distribution by by the U.K.’s Timeless Films. Produced by Ale Abreu, Luiz Bolognese’s Amazon indigenous community-set “The Foreigner” is one of the most anticipated of projects to be pitched at Annecy.
Initiatives which go with market trends have far larger chance of success the Quirino Awards are riding a building market wave.
John Hopewell and Christopher Vourlias contributed to this article
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