Mysore will host India’s first exclusive film and digital
arts festival, which will showcase a buffet of curated films, and the latest in
game cinematics, and visual effects.
Explaining the rationale for holding the event in Mysore, ABAI president and country head of Technicolor India, Biren Ghose, told dna, “Globally, animation and media festivals take place in small towns so that the event creates a dominant presence. Annecy (in France) ranks among the largest live action film festivals. Mysore will attract professionals and students from tier II and II towns, which is our target audience. It will also attract people from other parts of India who will travel to any location to see world class content. Normally, we go from here to Annecy and Cannes to see the same content.”
The ABAI Fest 2013, organised by the Association of
Bangalore Animation Industry (ABAI) is aimed at professionals and aficionados
of cinema and television, and computer games developers to give them and the
audience a taste of what it is to be part of this revolutionary new world of
digital content creation. The two-day festival, to be hosted at the Manasa
Gangotri complex, University of Mysore, will get under way on December 6.
Explaining the rationale for holding the event in Mysore, ABAI president and country head of Technicolor India, Biren Ghose, told dna, “Globally, animation and media festivals take place in small towns so that the event creates a dominant presence. Annecy (in France) ranks among the largest live action film festivals. Mysore will attract professionals and students from tier II and II towns, which is our target audience. It will also attract people from other parts of India who will travel to any location to see world class content. Normally, we go from here to Annecy and Cannes to see the same content.”
ABAI will not make arrangements for people from Bangalore to
travel to Mysore, but is providing assistance by blocking a certain number of
rooms half a dozen hotels and boarding houses there, Ghose said. The festival
is being supported by the Karnataka government as a part of its policy to
promote AVGC (animation, visual effects, gaming and comics) initiatives in the
state.
On other ABAI initiatives, the association’s president said,
“The execution of the (AVGC) policy is taking place in parts. The Train The
Trainer module has already been built and faculty hired too. It will be
inaugurated soon. Digital arts centres have been sanctioned by the government,
and advances paid for setting up seven centres through ABAI. The infrastructure
project to create facilities for small, medium and large companies has already
been scoped and a global tender for it will be released this month.”
Highlights of the festival
Ron Diamond, a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures,
will feature in the ‘ABAI special edition’ of ‘show of shows’ where world
leaders trace their journeys.
Shelley Page of DreamWorks Animation will be presenting her
‘Eye Candy Show’ which has travelled across the world. She was an artist on the
famous Who Framed Roger Rabbit as well as the Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu
Panda films.
The university venue will be retrofitted with three large
screening facilities where stalwarts of the industry from Hollywood, Europe and
India will present the films.
4 feature films which will be screened in the amphitheatre.
There would be 3 international short film packages.
Workshops on filmmaking and game design and development,
comic and merchandising would be organised.
Master classes on animation and VFX styles will be presented
in a “carnival” like atmosphere.
