The Cartoon Forum celebrates its 15th anniversary in Santiago de Compostela, one of Europe´s most beautiful and charming towns. Santiago is a historical town, but very young, active and dynamic, the capital of Galicia, seat of its autonomous institutions, home to a university whose history reaches back five centuries and a center for cultural events of all kinds.
Unusually, we will not be organising any tourist outings. Santiago´s wealth of an- cient buildings and the charm of its historic centre will provide many fascinating hours of discovery.
It is hard not to be touched by the soul of Santiago de Compostela, an open town, whose main characteristic is its hospitality; a town impatient to show us its history, its legends. But apart from its historic past, the region of Galicia is also very focused on the future and new technology. Today, Galicia turns its face resolutely towards the modern world, its culture and its audiovisual and computer technologies.
It is in this context that the local authorities were very keen to welcome the Cartoon Forum.
Projects from New European Countries
The poster was designed this year by Prado, who is very well known in Spain for his comic strips, which are also published in other countries around the world.
The Cartoon Forum was held in Galicia´s Auditorio, a modern conference centre set in a park very close to the town´s historic centre. The winner this year is Virgil Widrich with his film "Fast Film".
During the closing evening, we will visit many hidden corners of the old town. After the screening of the Cartoon d´Or in the Auditorio, dinner will take place in the cloister of the magnificent Monastery of San Martino Pinario, and we will end the evening in what was once a cinema and has now been converted into a night club. A real Spanish fiesta !
Manuel Cristóbal, Executive Producer, Dygra Films
I guess this text is a bit different from the rest of the pieces as everybody wrote them after they happened and I have to write it before it will happen. For that reason I will try to jump forward in time and imagine how it will be the Cartoon Forum Galicia. I would like to explain first how it was born.
Back in the 90’s there was hardly any animation in Galicia. All the main Spanish companies were located in Barcelona and Madrid so when we started in Dygra Films to think about «The Living Forest» in 1997 we were indeed rather lonely. We were in what the Romans once called «fi nis terrae» (the end of the Earth) and the success of the fi lm in 2001 was, you could say, the end of a long pilgrimage.
Nowadays animation in Galicia is one of the strongest in Spain, and the two principal animated feature producers are located here. We have the Cartoon Master Future and an active sector that targets the international marketplace. We hope this event will mark a before and an after in the Galician and Spanish animation sector. We believe that things change if you make them change and the Cartoon Forum is great proof of it.
We have been lucky to count on generous support, and a loyal regional government that has understood the crucial importance of the audiovisual world. Galicia is the only region in Spain with audiovisual legislation, defi ning this as a strategic sector, which was approved by the the Galician parliament by all the political parties. When we proposed to bring the Cartoon Forum to Galicia we found the warmest welcome and I hope you will notice it.
I hope that you will remember your pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela for the Cartoon Forum Galicia as something that will let you meet producers from all the different «fi nis terrae» of Europe. I hope you will remember the Plaza del Obradoiro with its wonderful cathedral, the different corners of the medieval city and the peace that the pilgrims bring to the city after you have completed a cherished journey.
But I also hope that the day after the Cartoon Forum Galicia you will begin another journey that will bring us all together again in another 15 years time to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Cartoon Forum.
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