Nishith Takia, Shelley Page (picnic host) and Michael Rose

Matt Groening and Lou Beauchard

Matt Groening and (picnic host) Biren Ghose

Lou Beauchard, Nick Park

Vrej Kassouny, me

Annecy Day 4

Sorry for the delay, a few days late I know but I've been unable to get online.

Friday 11^th June 2010

Last full day here spent working at MIFA in the morning where I finally met Jackie Edwards from the BBC (Cbeebies). She gave me some other useful BBC contacts.

Spoke briefly with Anthony Utley from Live Frame Studios and we are looking forward to talking more back home.

Most of the afternoon was spent at the annual DreamWorks / Technicolor / Autodesk picnic in the park. Met our generous hosts Biren Ghose from Technicolor in Bangalore, India and Shelley Page, DreamWorks. This picnic is for me the most important gathering of the festival as the key companies and individuals are invited and the party begins. I met dozens of people including most of the people mentioned so far along with Kerry Drumm my ex-colleague and good friend. She and husband Steve are emigrating to Oz in a few months – she will be missed by many in the UK.

Matt Groening and David Silverman turned up, everyone’s cameras came out again.

Other festival folk I met include:

Expo Toons – Buenos Aires

Vrej Kassouny, 'ReAnimania' – Yerevan International Animation Festival, Armenia

Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Norway

Animayo – Canary Islands

Also, production companies:

My friend and ex-Aardman colleague Michael Rose from Magic Light Pictures in London, Producer of the multi-award winning ‘The Gruffalo’. (I’m very pleased to see ‘The Gruffalo’ picked up the Annecy award this year for Best TV Special - well deserved).

Bryant Whittle from the UK

Nishith Takia from Krayon Pictures, India

Emma McGonigle and Sophie Trainor from MPC in London. Sophie I’ve known for years from the days when she ran the superb London Effects and Animation Festival.

Back at the Bonlieu cafe I bumped into Dimitri Granovsky, Director of the top quality Georges Melies School of Animation and Vis. FX in Orly, France. He’s going to kindly look into sourcing a few films for one of my programmes.

After dinner with Nick, Angie and Lou I met up with Darren Walsh from Passion Pictures for a last few sups of ale at the rammed Cafe des Arts behind the old prison in the old town. The Cafe is a main hangout for festival-goers. Chatted to Gerben Schermer from the Holland Animation Festival and Spike from the Spike and Mike festival USA.

Didn’t manage to make it to the Argentina party unfortunately – too tired!

All Annecy awards were announced on Saturday, here's the link:

http://www.annecy.org/annecy-2010/festival/awards

Congratulations to the winners and everyone who made it into competition and participated this year.

A la prochaine Annecy!