Editor

We will be reporting live from the festival

Currently one of the most fertile, creative and productive forms in cinema and television, animation occupies a pressure point between artistic, experimental, commercial and industrial media. It ranges from the latest visual FX-based arthouse films to family-friendly cartoons. The four-day San Francisco International Animation Festival celebrates San Francisco’s preeminence as a hub for one of the most creative forms in cinema today.

OPENING NIGHT

November 13
Sita Sings the Blues
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Nina Paley (USA 2008)
Betty Boop meets bhangra in Nina Paley’s celebrated first feature-length film, a beautifully animated visual feast of East meets West that has delighted audiences around the world.

November 14
The Best of Annecy 2008
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
The Best of Annecy 2008 presents a selection of the best shorts to have appeared this year at Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the most important festival for animation in Europe.

Locomotion
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
The short films in this program bring a fascinating and fascinated eye to the mechanics of movement.

Play It by Eye
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Play It by Eye reprises the San Francisco International Animation Festival’s popular survey of the best recently completed animated music videos

November 15
Play: The Art of the Animated Film Title
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Film title experts Design Films offer an entertaining showcase of animation and motion design in the modern era. Clips from more than 20 film title sequences will be shown.

The Best of Annecy 2008
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
The Best of Annecy 2008 presents a selection of the best shorts to have appeared this year at Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the most important festival for animation in Europe.

Encyclopedia Pictura
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
This shorts program features wildly creative music videos and animated, live action and hybrid pieces created by the enigmatic Bay Area collective known as Encyclopedia Pictura.

Control Freaks
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Are we masters of our own destinies? The short films in this program dance around the question, and ultimately evade it.

Waltz with Bashir
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Ari Folman’s animated Waltz with Bashir is a direct and uncompromising look at the effects of war, and one of the most inventive and powerful films of the year.

Idiots and Angels
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Bill Plympton expected to attend.
Indie animation king Bill Plympton’s newest feature is a dark and humorous allegory about morally bankrupt men.

Meet the Maker: Practice and Craft with Gene Deitch
10:00 am Ninth Street Independent Film Center Screening Room, 145 Ninth Street
Maverick animator Gene Deitch discusses his 50-plus years in animation.
$10 member, $15 general public.

November 16
Gene Deitch: A Retrospective of Films for Children
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Gene Deitch in person.
This child-friendly program of work by maverick animator Gene Deitch includes adaptations of stories by Maurice Sendak, an Oscar-winning classic, and some of Deitch’s own favorites and surprises.

Idiots and Angels
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Bill Plympton expected to attend.
Indie animation king Bill Plympton’s newest feature is a dark and humorous allegory about morally bankrupt men.

Waltz with Bashir
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Ari Folman’s animated Waltz with Bashir is a direct and uncompromising look at the effects of war, and one of the most inventive and powerful films of the year.

Elisabeth Bartlett