Animation Block Party

Saturday Night Cartoons

By Mark Polanzak

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This weekend, Animation Block Party, a film organization out of Brooklyn will be showing the best animated shorts from the past four years of its animated short film festival. This exclusive Boston engagement is the only stop outside of Brooklyn for Animation Block Party, the premiere animated short festival in the Northeast. The two-night showcase will feature past award winners from the organization's four-day film festival, held each July in Brooklyn. Twenty short films, including Harvard alum Becky 'James' Audience Award-winning 2007 film and several shorts from MassArt and other Boston-based animators and filmmakers, will take over the screens at Coolidge Corner Theatre at the two midnite showings.

Although ABP's annual film festival and Boston showcase include bigwig commercial animators (from studios such as Pixar), the organization stays true to its mission of bringing the underrepresented, underfunded, yet highly capable and creative filmmakers to the public. Much of the festival is comprised of student shorts, experimental animations and rarities.

Each year, ABP receives a deluge of 600 plus submissions for its festival, yet can only select around 88 excellent animated shorts. The films that have made the grade are then scrutinized again for prizes, such as Best Design, Best Narrative Short, Best Computer Animation, as well as Best in Show and Audience Award. The upcoming show at Coolidge filters through these gems once more to cull the best of the best and bring to you the coolest animated films you are going to find anywhere.

As an added bonus to this unique showcase, many of the filmmakers will be in attendance, and you can meet them and discuss their shorts. If you're an artist yourself, you can try to become a part of this ever-growing, über-hip, globally recognized animated festival by submitting your best film to Animation Block Party before June of 2008.

While perusing their website for submission guidelines you can also check out behind-the-scenes looks at some of the best animated shorts being produced, see interviews with filmmakers, watch clips from award-winning shorts, and buy "mix tape" DVDs of many of the shorts shown at the festival over the past four years. Aspiring animators note: Only a $5 submission fee and a production grant prize if you win. One thing is for sure, this is the place for animation ... period.

ANIMATION BLOCK PARTY

THE COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE

290 HARVARD ST.

BROOKLINE

617.734.2500

FRI. 2.8-SAT.2.9/MIDNIGHT/$7.75

ANIMATIONBLOCK.COM

COOLIDGE.ORG