I’ve had my hands incredibly full these past few weeks, if you’re wondering at all why I’ve not been posting much recently, and I still have a few loose ends to tie up here before I get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and head to Nippon Connection for my seventh year running. Yes, hard to believe, but it’s already been a year since we were all stranded in Frankfurt by the Icelandic volcano whose name no one could ever pronounce. There are plenty of goodies on offer again this year, including a CALF Animation Special & Independent Animation Filmmakers’ Talk moderated by Cathy Munroe Hotes of Nishikata Film Review featuring Mirai Mizue, Nobuaki Doi and Tochka on 29 April · 18:00 – 21:30.
This presents me with the opportunity to mention that the CALF collectives’ work has proved extremely popular in the UK of late – we got a great turnout at the Zipangu Fest / CALF charity fundrasiser for the Tohoku Earthquake on Sunday 2 April (thanks once again to Phil and the wonderful staff at the Roxy for helping this happen), and 7 April saw a sell-out screening of the programme at Newcastle’s Star & Shadow screening where the staff had to carry sofas into the theatre to cram all the customers in!
Pixilate to Heal - the audience get involved at the CALF fundraiser at the Roxy, 3 April 2011
The UK-based animator Miho Lomon was present at the Roxy screening where she invited the audience to participate in her Pixilate to Heal – Japan Tsunami Appeal animation project (check the facebook page for more info). Hopefully her movie will be up on youtube soon so I can post a link to it on this website. Tochka also worked their animation magic to lend a voice of support to the earthquake victims, which I’m posting below.
Anyway, I may or may not post bulletins from Nippon Connection over the next few days, depending upon how busy I am, but this is just a promise to say once I’m back, I will post the final installment of my Widescreen Weekend report, so watch this space…
