Ottawa’s annual Animarket Trade Fair is a festival-long event that organizers hope will see the attendance of filmmakers, students, industry members and the general public.

‘We have schools, industry and products covered. We have a really wide range of companies,’ says Tina Paas, Animarket’s coproducer, and the Ottawa International Animation Festival’s assistant producer.

Among the 18 companies registered are regulars like Nelvana, Cinar and local company Dynomight Cartoons. A few newcomers will also be in attendance, all intent on showing their wares and possibly recruiting new talent.

A couple of animation software companies, Toolworks and Chromacolour, will also be displaying their goods.

‘We have some really great companies coming in, quite a few large Canadian animation companies and several international companies,’ says Paas.

Also headed to Ottawa for Animarket are schools from across the country looking to promote their programs and recruit new students.

Several online companies are joining the fray for the first time: adamfilms and wildbrain.com, both online distribs looking to pick up films, and Animation World Network. Wildbrain also plans to set up a live webcast at the festival, giving participants and those who can’t make it a peek into the non-screening and behind-the-scenes parts of the event.

‘We have quite a few films that are online films in the festival this year, so it seems fitting to have Internet coverage to supplement that,’ says Paas. ‘It just seems that’s a growing trend.’

Animarket, to be held in the lobby of the festival-venue National Arts Centre, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., starting on Sept. 19, just before the festival’s opening ceremonies and closes Sept. 24, the festival’s final day. ‘It goes hand in hand with the screenings, so when people filter in [for their screenings] that’s when they can look at the booths,’ says Paas. *

– www.awn.com/ottawa/ottawa00