Address by Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, on the occasion of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival

I wanted to be with you tonight; I wanted to greet this magnificent
event. The Annecy International Animation Film Festival
honours our country by its truly international influence, by its
legendary conviviality, thanks to the beauty and pleasure of its host city
but also because it celebrates that part of the cinema that we all love
because we’ve known him since childhood, because she helped
to make us love cinema, I want to talk about the cartoon, as we
said before the digital age...

In my opinion, the Annecy Festival is like the Cannes Film Festival and the
of Clermont Ferrand for the short film, one of these
world renown that remind us that France is a land of
all forms of cinema. And by their presence, by their
sustainability, through their innovations, these events contribute to this
so be it.

I couldn’t be with you last year to celebrate your fifty candles
And that’s why I wanted to be with you tonight.

Like many film buffs of my generation, the discovery of
cinema was marked by that of the great Disney cartoons that
enchanted my childhood. And we understand why intellectuals
like Walter Benjamin or great theorists like Eiseinstein
was fascinated by Walt Disney’s cinema. Later I also
discovered with great admiration the subtle and delicate art of Jiri Trnka,
then Paul Grimault, Topor and Lalou. Finally next to the fascinating audacity
creators of Pixar and Dreamworks, all the new generation of
French designers: Ocelot, Laguionie, Girerd, Chomet, and those who came
comic book:
Marjane Satrapi and Joan Sfar, not to mention Luc Besson, and more recently
the Oscar-winning trio of Logorama or the brilliant gold palm awarded to
Serge Avedikian for History Dog in Cannes last year. Their
success reflects how much the world of the «screen society», the
digital creation cannot be conceived and developed without values and
the principles underlying artistic creation and innovation:
vision of the world, a poetic look.

France is one of the countries where the creation of animated films is of a
exceptional quality, both in artistic terms but also because
artistic teams know how to rely on cutting-edge technologies. In
testifies to the magnificent success of Me, ugly and wicked, 3D movie
produced by an American major, but made entirely in
France thanks to the tax credit we recently introduced
with the support of Parliament and I thank President Accoyer. This film
that you presented last year in Annecy has, since, done the tour of the
$550 million in revenues and achieved three
million admissions in France. We have another asset. We benefit
schools that provide high quality training such as the
Gobelins, present here in Annecy, Angoulême or the National School
Superior of Decorative Arts (ENSAD), without forgetting Supinfocom. This
quality of French training is recognized around the world:
allows us to attract the best specialists in design
new media; it guarantees our students
opportunities and opportunities to export their talent.

I am convinced that animation has a very bright future ahead of
it. It gathers a very large audience, it knows remarkable successes
year by year. In my opinion, it allows the expression of a creation
graphic that plays with reality. It carries a clean poetry, a capacity
unique to transport us in universes with pure forms
and unique characters. He thus participates fully in the
the magic of cinema, of its nobility, of those dreams of children who
never stopped leaving us since the fleeting images of the lantern
magical.

Today animation is also at the crossroads of other
creative disciplines in full vitality, in the image of comics
and video games. I personally believe in necessity and
the richness of the links that can be forged between these new territories of
creation and innovation.

admiration and interest in their work. It is an art of editing and
of the sequence, it is also, I know, an art of patience! I will be
always vigilant so that the specificity of this mode of creation is
recognized and taken into account in our aid system and
I will pay particular attention to ensuring that the
National Centre for Cinema and Motion Picture (CNC) devices
as innovative as art itself. Because animation is often at the point
innovation. This is what we have done, for example, by establishing
for the animation a bridge between support to the production of
television and feature films. We will need
to continue down this path if the need arises.

Finally, I will also be very careful that the public television service is
a dynamic partner of French animation and gives it the impetus and
visibility it deserves. So thank you and congratulations to everyone!