MONTREAL: Six young filmmakers from across the country have entered an intensive 12-week National Film Board mentorship program called Animation Hothouse. Each will direct a 10- to 30-second animated work from creative inception through to final sound mix and video mastering.

Sponsored by the English Program’s Animation Studio under executive producer David Verrall, the Hothouse filmmakers started work in Montreal on Jan. 6 under the supervision of program director Chris Hinton, an Oscar nominee for his 1991 film Blackfly. Hinton is also nominated for a Genie this year for his award-winning NFB short Flux. Hothouse producer is animator Michael Fukushima (From Far Away).

The Animation Hothouse filmmakers are: Heather Harkins (Halifax), Anouk Prefontaine (Montreal), Jo Meuris (Montreal), Jacob Bauming (Toronto), Malcolm Sutherland (Calgary) and Cindy Mochizuki (Vancouver).

Fukushima says he, Verrall and NFB producer Marci Page had a list of ‘three or four dozen’ potential candidates – mostly young animators they met on the festival circuit and/or contacts active with production cooperatives.

‘The thing I have been struggling with as a producer is access, trying to open the place up,’ says Fukushima. He says support for mentorship programs such as Hothouse has deepened under NFB chair Jacques Bensimon and English Program director general Tom Perlmutter.

The animation studio plans to organize ‘at least two more’ animation mentor sessions in Montreal in the next year.

The NFB paid for the filmmakers’ transportation and accommodations, and each participant receives an $8,500 honorarium.

‘They have been here for a week already and it has been amazing. These are 20-year-old kids for whom everything is simply wow! and it’s refreshing,’ says Fukushima.

In other NFB news, the Ontario Production Centre became a partner in the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Al Waxman Calling Card program this fall, contributing $20,000 to support the work of an emerging filmmaker.

This year marks the 30th anniversaries of the Filmmaker Assistance Program and Aide au cinema independant – Canada, long-standing NFB support programs for independent filmmakers.