You should take advantage of the super cheap tickets only at $10 bucks with cast and crew and special events happening. If your into anime they're screening Akira and Grave of the Fireflies, if you're not they have the classic Iron Giant and something called "Dick Figures".
Jerry Beck renowned knowledge keeper of all things cartoon from the great animation news site Cartoon Brew was nice enough to tell me about an earlier animation festival in LA.
Hey Jerry,
Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. With the LA Animation Festival happening in March I'm reminded of an earlier festival I've only seen through pictures on old Animation Magazine covers.
Jonathan Bilski TTDILA: I just read an article from the LA Times with you in it about the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration. It seemed like it was a huge animation event, larger than LAAF, was it?
Jerry Beck Cartoon Brew: It was. It was called the ANIMATION CELEBRATION and it featured a competition, tributes, retrospectives, new features and panels. It modeled itself on International animation festivals in Annecy, Zagreb and Ottawa. LAFF is a smaller more compact version of that, a little more laid back L.A..
Does it have any connection to the current LAFF?
No connection, though a few people like myself are consulting with LAFF to help with programming.
What happened to it?
The ANIMATION CELEBRATION was run by Terry Thoren, publisher of ANIMATION MAGAZINE, and was backed by Landmark Theatres. Terry has moved on -- and running an animation festival in LA is a huge enterprise, costly and has little financial return. That's what ended that.
Did Anime Expo help with I assume it's down fall in that it became a better place for anime to be seen?
I don't think there is any connection between the two. ANIMATION CELEBRATION was a film festival. ANIME EXPO is a Japanese animation Comic Con. Two different things.
Also, just for the heck of it your thoughts on the Annie Awards this year, I attended and laughed quite a bit at all the mistakes, which did make quite entertaining. Like do you know if that guy who got up for one award and walked out was just going to the bathroom? People were guessing at the after aprty about that one.
As a member of the Board of Directors of Asifa-Hollywood, I thought the Annie Awards was fun - and the mistakes only added to the crazieness. I had a blast.