The 2017 KuanDu International Animation Festival (KDIAF) closed on November 4 by announcing the winners of the KuanDog Prize.

 

The Best International Animated Short Film KuanDog Award went to “Negative Space,” created by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata from France.

 

The Best Student Film award went to “Garden Party,” a joint effort by Florian Babikian, Vincent Bayoux, Victor Caire, Theophile Dufresne, Gabriel Grapperon and Lucas Navarro from France. 

The Taiwan Special Award was given to two films: “White Tunnel,” by Chien Lan-Chi and Chang Chin-Wei; and “Understand? Understood” by Lee Wen Jin, who graduated from TNUA.

 

This year more than 2,000 entries from 93 countries were submitted to the competition. “Negative Space” emerged victorious from a short list of 31 in the Industry category, and “Garden Party” from a short list of 55 in the student group. 

 

The award presentation ceremony on November 4 gathered together guests of honor that included: Prof. Chen Chu-Yin from the Department of Arts and Technology of the Image at University Paris 8; Dario Imbrogno, the Italian director whose “OSSA” won the 2016 KuanDog Award for International Short Film; Pedro Rivero, director of “Psiconautas, the Forgotten Children,” one of the feature films of this year’s festival;  Jean-Christophe Soulageon, producer of another feature film, “The Girl Without Hands”; renowned animation artist Robert Engler; and Till Dietsche, a member of the jury of International Short Film for the 2017 KDIAF.

 

Attending the ceremony were also TNUA Vice President Chiu Hsien-hsun, as well as others from TNUA’s Animation Department, including its chairperson, Prof. Shih Ming-Huei.

 

Prof. Chen from University Paris 8, who was also a member of the KDIAF jury this year, noted that the films that entered 2017 KDIAF were exceptional, giving the jury a difficult time determining the winners.

 

Prof. Chen congratulated TNUA’s Animation Department on its success in holding such an international festival.

 

The eight-day festival featured about a dozen master lectures and workshops, held by animation artists and experts from various countries.  

 

People and organizations from around the world were present at the festival, including the historic International Short Film Festival Berlin (Interfilm), which screened selected works. University Paris 8's computer graphics and art department (ATI) presented an intensive three-week workshop where nearly 40 animation works were created.

 

The artists and guests that gave talks and workshops during the festival included: the head of Australian National University’s School of Music, Kenneth Lampl; Dario Imbrogno; Pedro Rivero; Robert Engler; and the director of Taiwanese feature-length animated film “On Happiness Road,” Sung Hsin-Yin. 

 

The festival screened almost 100 films in competition, as well as six specially-invited feature-length animation works.

 

One of them was the opening film “Ballerina,” a co-production of French and Canadian animation companies that took seven years to make. The other was the closing film, “ Long Way North (Tout en haut du monde),” an artistically refined 2D animation film from France which won the Audience Award at the 2015 Annecy International Animated Film Festival as well as the Grand Prize in the Feature Animation category at the 2016 Tokyo Anime Award Festival.

 

The other four feature films were: “Psiconautas, the Forgotten Children,” “Anomalisa,” “The Girl Without Hands (La Jeune Fille sans mains),” and “My Life as a Courgette (Ma vie de Courgette).”

“The Girl Without Hands” is an independently produced animation done in the style of ink wash painting that won the Jury Award at the 2016 Annecy International Film Festival.

 

Swedish animated film “My Life as a Courgette” explores the question about love. It won both the Audience Award and the Cristal for a Feature Film at the 2016 Annecy International Film Festival, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature “Psiconautas, the Forgotten Children” won the Satoshi Kon Award for Best Animated Feature at the 2016 Fantasia International Film Festival in Canada. The film presents a starkly contrasting take on ecological awareness and a coming of age story.

 

“Anomalisa” is a stop-motion animated film that won the Grand Special Jury Prize at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival and was the first adult film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. 

 

The festival also screened some of the films outside TNUA in Taipei to let more people experience the fun of animation.

 

 

Caption: The jury of 2017 KDIAF, the winners of KuanDog awards, and the teachers and students from TNUA’s Animation Department, pose for a picture after the award presentation ceremony.