Pulled out of the hammerspace of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology just three weeks ago when the budget was approved, the inaugural Bangkok International Animation Festival unspools in full today, playing around 40 features and shorts alongside the bigger Bangkok International Film Festival.

The two festivals share schedules and venues, and combine for some special events.

The animation fest opened on Friday with the world premiere of Yona Yona Penguin by Japanese animator Rintaro. A Thai firm, Imagimax, had a hand in the production.

The aim of the festival, backed by MICT, the Software Industry Promotion Agency and various other organizations and agencies, is to highlight Thailand's emerging role as a hub for computer graphics and animation, and try to inspire local animators.

Before I get too deeply into the program, I want to share my excitement about a few of the films, even though because of scheduling conflicts, I probably won't see any of them myself:


Sita Sings the Blues -- American animator Nina Paley channeled the heartbreak of being dumped into a colorful song-and-dance adaptation of the Ramayana. It's a breathless blend of distinct styles of animation that tell the story of the goddess Sita. Her viewpoint is voiced by the music of 1920s jazz and blues singer Annette Hanshaw. There's also a hilarious trio of Indian shadow puppets who try to tell the story, and illustrate how the epic tale can prove unwieldy. Paley struggled to make the thing, and then released it herself, only to face another challenge -- she hadn't cleared the publishing rights for the Hanshaw tunes, which were integral to her art. A compromise with the publishers was eventually worked out, but as a result, Paley became a champion for the Creative Commons alternative copyright scheme. But gosh, aside from all that, Sita is just a blast to watch -- I saw it last year at the World Film Festival of Bangkok. If you miss it in the festival, it's freely downloadable from various sources. It's showing at 10.40am on Saturday and at 2.20pm on Tuesday, both at at SFW CentralWorld.


Mary and Max -- This stop-motion clay animated feature from Australia premiered at Sundance and has been featured in Berlin and other festivals. It's the tale of a friendship between two unlikely pen pals -- an 8-year-old girl in Melbourne and a 44-year-old man in New York City. He's voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman and the voice cast also includes leading Australian lights like Toni Collette and Eric Bana. It's showing at 1pm on Saturday and 12:15 on Tuesday at SFW CentralWorld.


Edison and Leo -- Hey, here's yet another stop-motion animated feature. This one's from Canada, and is purportedly the first. It won rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival. The story concerns George Edison (voiced by Powers Boothe), a 19th century inventor whose son, Leo, has been cursed to be “electrified” for life, leaving him unable to touch anyone or anything without electrocuting it. It's playing at 10.45am on Saturday and noon on Wednesday at Paragon.


Azur et Asmar -- French director Michel Ocelot weaves in anti-racism messages in his adventure packed story of two men -- a blond-haired, blue-eyed nobleman and a dark-skinned Arab -- raised as brothers by an Arab nanny, who tells them a fairytale of a fairy princess, waiting to be rescued. As they grow up, they never stop believing in th story. At 10.30 on Sunday and 2 on Wednesday at SFW CentralWorld.

There are a load of animated shorts, many I guess were simply grabbed wholesale from the Annecy festival in France, which is the world's premier animation fest.

There are also a bunch of Thai-animated shorts -- there really are quite a few talented independent animators in Thailand -- a few of which were featured at the recent Thai Short Film and Video Festival. Among them are Abtakon and Pee-Bok Song. The animated shorts sections run at 10.45am and 12.20pm on Saturday at SFW CentralWorld and at 10.45 on Sunday at Paragon.

Several films in the program have played already in Thai cinemas or are widely available for home video. For example, the closing film, Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea, has been playing in a limited run in Bangkok cinemas for the past month. But hey, it's by Hayao Miyazaki -- a legend in the animation business. And it's well worth seeing -- a joyful romp about the balance between the marine environment and the human world being upset by a magical goldfish princess' desire to be human.

There is also Shane Acker's intensely dark 9, about a plucky band of ragdolls who literally hold the last breaths of humanity.

There are several Thai animated features that are part of the Asean section in the animation festival. These include the computer-animated Khan Kluay from 2006 and this year's Khan Kluay II, about King Naresuan's war elephant. There is also Nak, which makes the character from Thailand's beloved ghost story a kid-friendly heroine, and the 2D animated Buddha, a reverent depiction of the Lord Buddha's birth, enlightenment and nirvana.

Of course no Thai animation festival would be complete without a tribute to the father of Thai animated film -- Payut Ngaokrachang. The 80-year-old artist will have a tribute night on Tuesday, and his The Adventure of Sudsakorn will get a special gala screening at Paragon at 8. Released in 1979, it was the first and only Thai animated feature, until 2006 when Khan Kluay came out.

From China is The Magic Aster, which features voice work by basketball star Yao Ming.

And there are animations from Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Dayo, the Filipino entry, has received fair praise. A fantasy about a boy trying to rescue his grandparents from a magical realm, it's been compared to Miyazaki's Spirited Away

The Malaysian entry, Geng: Pengembaraan Bermula (Geng: The Adventure Begins) is touted as Malaysia's first 3D animated feature. It's about boys trying to solve the mystery of missing durians in the their village.

And then there is Sing to the Dawn, a joint production by Indonesia and Singapore that was released almost a year ago, and has generally been poorly received.

A common theme that runs through reviews of the Southeast Asian entries is that none of them are as good as Pixar, because they don't have the manpower, the money or the time to make their movies as good as A Bug's Life, Toy Story or The Incredibles.

I think it just presents an opportunity for local animation teams to innovate and try different approaches, rather than try to copy the Pixar way of doing things.

The schedule is rounded out by the 3D animated Goat Story from the Czech Republic and the anime Chocolate Underground, both of which are in the competition lineup with Mary and Max, The Magic Aster, Edison and Leo and Khan Kluay II.

Feature-film judges are Singaporean producer Mike Wiluan, French producer Regis Ghezelbash, and Thai singer-artist Petch Osathanugrah. There's a short-film jury too: Pixar animator Mark Oftedal from the US, Thai filmmaker Nonzee Nimibutr and Dennis Chau from Hong Kong.

Winners will get the newly created Inthanin Award, named after a popular flowering tree.