Ottawa: Two years might be enough for the International Student Animation Festival (safo), says festival director Chris Robinson.

Plagued by that most fearsome of festival killers – a lack of buzz – Robinson says that in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 21-24 event, he was ready to give the festival last rites following this year’s edition.

But now he’s revisiting the idea of gutting safo, which alternates every year with its big sister, the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

‘I was pretty much convinced a couple of weeks ago that I was just going to scrap safo and make the big Ottawa festival an annual festival and just incorporate safo into it,’ he says. ‘But I’m not so sure at this point.’

Robinson’s change of heart came about less from improved attendance numbers than from the stream of positive feedback he received from students attending. ‘There’s no other student festival of animation in the world, so I’ll have to think long and hard about this one,’ he says.

Yet, despite the possible reprieve, some members of the animation community would welcome such a move. Deborah Fallows, director of recruiting at Nelvana, says she supports the idea of folding safo into the larger festival as long as workshops and competitions aimed at students continue.

Fallows points to the difficulty safo has in attracting the large groups of working animators who usually attend the large festival as one way students would benefit from such a change. Unless animators are participating in a workshop or panels, they don’t attend the student festival, she says.

‘That limits the students’ exposure because they don’t have a chance to actually talk to many animators who are working in the industry. (The only people) they talk to are industry people in the workshops or other students.’

Teletoon original productions coordinator Athena Georgaklis, however, says merging safo with its big sister might leave students lost in the shuffle. ‘Unless it is well organized and there is attention being paid to student categories or student workshops,’ she says, ‘I would be afraid that the students wouldn’t have a voice.’

Aside from Nelvana and Teletoon, major industry players attending this year’s safo included Nickelodeon, Cuppa Coffee, Warner Bros., Film Roman and Cartoon Network.

Festival events took place in the National Archives of Canada building overlooking the Ottawa river and just a few blocks from Parliament Hill.

This year’s student competitions leaned heavily to the experimental and shied almost completely away from computer-generated work, meaning that much of the work presented reflected little of what is actually being produced by studios.

That fact was not lost on studio representatives, several of whom, despite almost universal approval of the festival as a whole, commented on a lack of balance in programming.

‘I’d like to see a wider range of programming and probably more cg,’ says Fallows. ‘(But) overall, I think it’s an excellent forum for students to get tips from the industry.’

Nelvana participated in one of the few events geared toward the technology of animation, presenting a Thursday afternoon workshop titled ‘New Tools of the Trade.’ Toronto-based Alias| Wavefront also participated.

Aside from films entered in the official competition, festival organizers paraded a succession of anti-establishment animators before attendees, including works from top u.s. independent animator George Griffin and a collection of surreal pieces by u.k. sensation and u2 collaborator Run Wrake.

Robinson easily brushes aside any notion that safo is weighted too heavily in favor of edgy works. ‘Honestly, I take it as a compliment when people say the program is too arty,’ he says.

‘I’m not against mainstream, although I do spout on about it to a degree. If there’s good mainstream stuff, it would have been in the competition, but there really wasn’t any in the selection.’

Another much-discussed subject in and around the booths of the animarket was the closed-door policy of u.s. immigration stifling opportunities for some of the best and brightest young Canadian animators.

Kit Fair, the head of recruitment at Nickelodeon, says her presence at this year’s festival was more to represent her company than to take home demo tapes.

In fact, she says, Nickelodeon just lost one Canadian staff member because of visa restrictions. ‘It’s very difficult right now,’ Fair says. ‘We had a girl from Canada who worked for us for three years but had to go home because she couldn’t get her visa renewed.’

While not new, this issue has particular ramifications to students looking for a foot in the door with a major animation house, many of which reside south of the border.

Still, this issue seemed lost on the folks manning the Film Roman booth (which was actually a couch along one wall of the animarket). The animation house, responsible for ink and paint on The Simpsons and King of the Hill, is staffing two new series and recruiters spent the four days of the festival collecting sample tapes in grocery bags.

Lawrence DeFlorio, a SoftImage instructor at Seneca College, says it’s particularly hard for traditional animators to find work in the u.s. ‘The gate’s slowly closing,’ he says.

‘The (students) who get jobs are traditional animators but ones who also have the computer background,’ he says. ‘They need to have some kind of it training.’

Winner of this year’s $3,000 grand prize for best film in competition was Grace, a mixed-media film by u.s. animator Lorelei Pepi. Asifa-Canada Award for best Canadian film ($750) went to Jakub Pistecky for Little Milos.

Other winners in this year’s competitions were:

Grand Prize, Best School in Competition: Royal College of Art, England

Cartoon Network Award for Best First Film ($1,000): Monster by Alexey Antonov, Russia

Nelvana Award for Best Graduate Film ($500): Passport by Siri Melchior, England

Directors Prize ($500): Bermuda by Ulo Pikkov, Estonia

Alias|Wavefront Award for Best Computer Film (a complete Maya software package for one year): The Littlest Robo, Richard Kenworthy, England

Teletoon Award for Best Film by a Child: Mari Lwyd by the children of Plas Newydn School, Maesteg, Wales

First Prize, High School: Java Noir by Raf Anzovin, u.s.

First Prize, Undergraduate: Mister Smile by Fran Krause, u.s.

Chromacolour Award for Best Use of Color: At the Drop of a Hat by Hotessa Laurence, England.