Big Toons in the Big Apple

A report on Brooklyn's recent Animation Block Party

by Jake Friedman.

*Originally published in the September, 2008 issue of Animation Magazine

What might a perfect animation festival be like? Well, for starters, it would have a little bit of the old and a lot of the new. Unknowns would play along side the heavy-hitters for an equal share of the audience. Throw in live music, free drinks, and New York City, and you got yourself a real treat for any animation fan.

July 25th through the 27th marked the fifth annual Animation Block Party, the premiere animation festival of New York. It encompassed three days of screenings and after-parties. Folks were invited to bring their own refreshments for nighttime screenings on the lawn, and venues like Havana Outpost projected animation on the wall while people ordered their barbeque. Needless to say, Animation Block Party is an aptly-named arts festival.

The event was especially huge this time around. “It’s amazing how it’s grown in five years,” says festival head Casey Safron. “We had more programs than ever, we had more people than ever – a thousand on opening night alone. And as we keep upping the ante, the after parties get bigger, the bands get bigger, and with a hundred films screened this year, we can show more movies from the most diverse talent you can find.”

Safron, originator and curator of the festival, moonlights as the head of SVA’s animation department, so he sees emerging talent on a regular basis and invests that energy into the fest. “The big thing is emphasizing the undiscovered talent and the underdog and not always going to the clichéd favorite animators,” says Safron. “Obviously we do show a lot of the bigwigs like Aardman or Plympton, but we really focus on getting the new voices from the art schools, to get the exposure to people. That’s really what I hope to do with Animation Block Party.”

Keeping the festival underdog-friendly is the low submission fee for students and professionals alike. “I wouldn’t ever want someone to spend more than $50 to send us a two-minute movie. That just seems totally out of control,” says Safron. The judges of the festival, of which Safron is one, offer prizes for such categories as the Minute and Under Award (won by Phil Dubrovsky and Dale Hayward for Flower Sound Cartoon) and Best Documentary Short (won by Laura Piraino for ETC-The Story of Two Women). Best in Show went to Luis Cook for The Pearce Sisters, and Max Winston took home the coveted Audience Award for I Live in the Woods.

The festival has also added a subsidiary production company, headed by Safron. “A lot of opportunities have arisen out of ABP. In the past couple years,” he says. “There was a film called Binge and Purge by Ben Weinhart at the Vancouver Film School that won the Audience Award in 2005. Around that time, networks started coming to us asking if there were any filmmakers with ideas to pitch them. So we brainstormed back and forth with Ben, and he came up with a concept for a series called Perfectland. It premiered on MTV this past Earth Day and is now being screened at APB. It was produced by ABP in conjunction with the filmmaker. We really worked together to create something great.”

Safron adds, “Bob Fox in 2005 showed a short with us called Breakfast, so we teamed up with Bob and pitched his film,which was picked up by the Sundance channel. So we just completed another Animation Block Production.”

With all its success, Safron plans to keep it an artist-driven event. “I don’t ever see Animation Block Party becoming a giant commercial entity with huge corporate sponsors,” he says, referring to other film festivals in the country. “I want to keep it on a grassroots and indie level. If corporate sponsorship would help make it a better festival and get us more funding to bring the filmmakers more opportunities, then that would certainly be considered. But it’s grassroots, it’s true to Brooklyn, and true to that first voice we had five years ago.”

At the end of the day Safron has big plans for the future. “I’d like it to be on an Annecy, Ottowa level. But right now this is the biggest animation festival on the east coast of the USA, and I think that’s pretty cool.”

Further information, including a complete film list and DVD’s, can be found on www.animationblock.com