The 48th Annual SFSU Film Finals are set for next Friday, May 16, 7pm – 9pm at the McKenna Theatre, (Creative Arts building, SF State 1600 Holloway Ave. San Francisco). This is the roundup of student work in all genres and media presented by faculty adviser Raymond Rea. The program showcases the year’s top Cinema student productions, and the juried Film Finals features short films in animation, experimental, documentary, narrative, film noir and creative cross-genre categories.

But of course, the main attraction for CableCartoon riders is the Animation Finals show scheduled a few hours earlier, from which the winning Animations were selected. That show starts at 3pm in the August Coppola Theater (in the adjacent Fine Arts Building). Admission is FREE, but get there early—the hall fills up fast! We’ll have more info about the animation lineup soon, so get back aboard the CableCartoon next week.

If it seems like the air is filled with the sound of feverishly clicking keyboards and furiously scribbling pencils, maybe that’s because the local animation students are all racing to complete this year’s film finals. And there’s a lot of animation education around the Bay, from SF State, the Academy of Art and the Art Institute of San Francisco up north, to San Jose State and De Anza in the south, to Berkeley City College and Expression College in the east, just to name a few. (In fact, CableCartoon just conducted its first interviews with a graduating class of computer animation students—stay tuned for details.) And we’ll keep you up-to-date with screenings and showings so you can see what the latest crop of clickers and scribblers have cooked up.

If your school has an animation screening coming up, be sure to let us know.

Let’s hope Shell-Head can find the theater in the S.F. fog… 

FX Animation Fans Assemble! The latest superhero film based on a Marvel character opens this weekend, but what makes it worth a mention here is that some of the VFX team from Industrial Light and Magic will be on hand to talk about their work. Wayne Billheimer (Visual Effects Producer / ILM) and Marc Chu ( Lead Animator / ILM) will be introducing the 7pm screening of Iron Man on Friday, May 2nd and will stay to answer audience questions after the show.

The Balboa Theater is one of the last of the great old-school theaters in San Francisco, presenting new films with real enthusiasm for the traditional theater-going experience. So turn off the TV and show up for the Friday, May 2 screeing at 7pm!

There’s just about two weeks left to submit your film into the second annual California Animation Festival. The regular entry deadline is Thursday May 1, 2008, but since we all know that deadlines are made to be broken, there’s a FINAL entry deadline two weeks later on May 15, 2008. The festival is accepting shorts and features in the following categories: 2D Animation, 3D Animation, Anime and Other Animation & Mixed Media. Get more info here.

The CalAniFest is presented by the Fireside Foundation, Inc., the same non profit organization responsible for the "Kids with Cameras" project and Central California Independent Film Group which is dedicated to "…Preserve, Promote and Perpetuate Independent Film through Education and Exhibition." The CalAniFest promises to do the same for Central California animators, (and the CableCartoon is all for that!)

Mark your calendars for CalAniFest which will be held on July 19, 2008 at the historic State Theatre in downtown Modesto.

The Cartoon Art Museum proudly presents an evening with Lloyd Dangle, creator of the nationally-syndicated weekly political cartoon Troubletown, for a special presentation celebrating Troubletown’s 20th anniversary. Join Dangle for a slideshow featuring highlights from the past two decades of his award-winning comic, followed by a Q&A session and booksigning. General admission to this presentation is $5, and the event is free to Cartoon Art Museum members. Dangle will be signing copies of his latest release, Troubletown: Told You So: Comics That Could’ve Saved Us From This Mess, featuring 196 pages of Lloyd Dangle at his best, caustically comic stripping the Bush administration’s lead up and mishandling of the war in Iraq, without sparing the enabling Democrats, the media, the Mullahs, the corporate overlords, or the squawking chicken hawks. Not simply controversial for controversy’s sake, Troubletown cartoons turn one CNN talking point after another on its head––with a screwball logic all their own. Troubletown is frequently praised as the funniest comic strip in the alternative press.

 About Lloyd Dangle: Lloyd Dangle’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in over 100 magazines and newspapers of every type from the crusty corporate mainstream to the bleeding, subcommercial edge. He has been featured in publications including American Lawyer, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Shape, Sierra, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New York Times, Outside, Time Magazine, Utne Reader, The Village Voice and Wired. His drawings adorn the packaging of Airborne effervescent cold remedy, which the company claims is one fastest-selling products in retail history, and he was the first cartoonist assigned to cover the Republican National Convention in New York City armed with nothing but a pen and sketchbook. The resulting cartoon was selected for Houghton Mifflin’s series The Best American Comics. When not on the road covering bizarre and dangerous political events, he works out of his converted garage in Oakland, California

 For interview requests, review copies, and other inquiries, please contact Lloyd Dangle’s publicist, Nettie Hartsock: nettie@nettiehartsock.com or 512-396-1067

Free Animation Talk
April 27 at 3pm, Berkeley City College

Pixar’s Doug Frankel is launching the Animation Stand with "3-D Animation Story: Making it Work" a free presentation this Sunday, as part of the new Berkeley City College’s Open House. Frankel just finished supervising the traditionally-animated Pixar short Your Friend, the Rat (winner of the 2008 Annie award for best short). He has worked on the story for Ratatouille, and animated on The Incredibles, Cars and Wall-e.
 
Additionally, there will be other hands-on activities in the arts, humanities, drama, dance, music and science at California’s first fully Green Campus. The Open House is on Sunday, April 27 from 12noon-5pm at 2050 Center Street, Berkeley, CA and the events are free to the public. Visit their website for more information.

ASIFA-SF held its annual chapter meeting on Friday, April 18, according to the bylaws set down by the ancient animators of Annecy, long before the dawn of CGI. Karl Cohen reviewed the achievements and events of 2007, including open screenings for professionals and students/independents; special guests including visitors from Belgium, China and the Czech Republic; a Careers in Animation panel; special invites for members to see Bee Movie, Beowulf, and the Oscar-nominated animated shorts; a couple of parties and more.

Treasurer Karen Lithgow gave the financial report (we’re solvent!) but issued a plea to the membership to consider other fund-raising activities in the coming year. (That’s a good idea, Karen—art auction, anyone?) Your humble conductors PowellMason and CaliforniaKid rolled out the CableCartoon in public for all to see, with signs and flyers, too! And finally, Mr. Cohen was officially re-elected President of ASIFA-SF for the sixteenth consecutive year, and we finally gave him some business cards, just to show it was official.

Last night’s Open Screening for Students & Independents attracted a near-capacity crowd for over two-and-a-half hours of films! The 30+ shorts encompassed a full range of animation techniques: from the trippy post-psychedelia of David Normal’s Pyramid, to the measured, Magritte-esque pixellation of Michael Langan’s Doxology, to the fiendishly executed CGI of Breaking the Rig; from the classically-rendered, Disneyesque How to Avoid the Slaughterhouse (by Sabrina Cecchini) to the ’60s-Saturday-morning-homage Lightning Strikes… Out! (by the Sikoryak Bros.) to the rude ‘n’ crude ‘n’ proud-of-it Oddballs by Guillermo Gomez and Co.

We’ve got pictures, interviews and more in store (but first we have to decipher the scribbles we made in the dark). Keep riding the CableCartoon for a complete rundown of the films and filmmakers over the next few weeks.

Friday, April 18, 7:30pm
McBean Theater, Exploratorium, S.F.

The local stars are coming out for ASIFA-SF’s Annual Open Screening for new and upcoming animators. This is your opportunity to share completed films and works-in-progress to an enthusiastic crowd of fellow artists and enthusiasts. Everybody with an animated film is invited to bring it and it will be shown (16mm, VHS tape & DVD). Just show up with it! Got questions about the screening? Contact karlcohen@earthlink.net

The program will include:
DNN: Dead News Network by John Jota Leaños
Doxology by Michel Langan (Best Experimental Short, Slamdance 08.)
For the Masses by Corrie Francis (a day in the life of an urban wilderness)
Snowflakes by Emily Alden Foster (stop-motion)
Mousecapade from the Art Institute of Bournmouth, UK
A show reel from Animation Mentor.com
CCCP TV by David Chong
New work by students from De Anza College
Breaking the Rig, Princess and the P, Shady Lanes, Journey and Beijing Olympics spots by students from San Jose State University
Lightning Strikes… Out! a work-in-progress by Joe Sikoryak (aka CaliforniaKid)
A very short work by Gene Hamm
Pyramid by David Normal
Surprise Film by Don Albrecht (Walt wouldn’t approve)
Arch Fiend Assault by Geoff Clark
Music video (from Brazil) by Pricilla Batamatti

The show is always a lot of fun and well attended, so arrive early for a good seat. Watch the Cable Cartoon for more details on the films and filmmakers. If you are showing an animated film, we want to talk to you! Contact CaliforniaKid and let’s set up an interview.