Annecy 2007

I've just spent 6 days at the Annecy Animated Film Festival.
Annecy is a small town in France, near an Alp.
The citizens of Annecy discovered animation in the late 14oo's.
They used it to defend themselves against invaders.
In 1876 a band of rogue Mongol Warriors stole the secret of animation from the French and then used it to trade for rice wine from the Chinese.
They in turn sold it to the Japanese who used it to create Astroboy.

Here are some pictures of the city of Annecy.
It was a little rainy when I took these, but it was very warm the rest of our stay.
Annecy is made up to two cities, the very expensive city, and the very, very, very expensive city.
I didn't bother with the very expensive part as it was a little walk away and it's nice to have baguettes by the canal.


To celebrate the beauty of this medieval town, we all took turns shitting in the canal.



Cap'n Boris and I spent an hour sailing the high seas of Lake Annecy.






This is AnnMarie, Sean Hayden and Lisa.
You will note that AnnMarie is in mid sentence.
She usually is.


Here you see Matt Saxton, musician and masochist through a pair of interesting beer glasses.
A brand of beer called Kwack is served in these strange bulbs.

The glass itself is supported by a wooden frame.
It was invented by the Belgians who are no doubt very proud of this clever device.
The rest of the world took it a step further and attached the device to the actual glass.
We call it a "handle" and it's very bloody useful.
In the picture below, Boris demonstrates the functionality of this Belgian revelation while sitting next to an actual Belgian person.
The nearby Belgian is drinking his beer out of a shoe having not yet mastered "da handul".
The Australian to the right is taking his beer intravenously, via a drip.


Here, Boris and Matt Jones prepare for a night of erotic exploration.


Uli Meyer drank so much JD and Coke that his molecules became entwined with Lisa's, Brundlefly style.
The result was interesting: a tall German man with great skin and nice tits.
They had both recovered by the morning.


Will is the 12th best Englishman ever.
Here he has been hypnotised by the crafty AnnMarie, who is busy gobbling his frittes as he struggles to regain consciousness.


Here is some more Boris.
For scientific purposes he was photographed from every possible angle, to provide generations from the future an insight into what the perfect animator looks like.


These beams made up the ceiling of my hotel room.
In the olden days, unruly animators were crucified on this.
You can still see the ink stains.


Boris had a lovely notion of bringing a sketchbook to the festival in the hopes of collected lots of doodles from Walt Disney.
Walt didn't end up going, but we did have the opportunity to adorn this placemat with pictures of penises which the owner of the cafe was kind enough to stick up on the toilet door where it deserved to be.



We really did have a jolly time.
One of my films played at the festival and was greeted with bleary eyes and enthusiastic clapping once the audience realised that the 6 hours of experimental film making that preceded it was over.

A special thanks to Uli Meyer for providing us with drinks and a REALLY big thanks to Matt Saxton, who not only made me some music for my films, but also made sure everyone had a ticket, had their shoelaces tied and had a clean nappy on every morning.

I could go on endlessly about what a great time we had, the great people I met blah blah blah.
A picture tells a thousand words so I shall sum up our Annecy 2007 experience with this picture:


And then go watch Boxhead and Roundhead cartoons.