Animation films to premiere

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- The newest movies made in Grand Rapids, animation films made by local children ages 6-8, will be premiered next week, with free public admission.

The completed films, created in a youth workshop, will be screened on Monday, August 10, at 7 p.m. at the Wealthy Theater, 1130 Wealthy St. SE, in Grand Rapids. This local premiere is a collaboration between the Animation Outreach program at Grand Valley State University and the Mollie Program at the Grand Rapids Community Media Center. It is part of an international initiative to support and promote animation art films by children.

Deanna Morse and Gretchen Vinnedge, who teach film and video classes in Grand Valley’s School of Communications, organized the workshop. Vinnedge is the education director at the Community Media Center. Morse is a vice president of the international animation association, ASIFA (Association International du Film d’Animation) and a member of the ASIFA Animation Workshop Group (AWG). 

Children in nearly 20 AWG groups around the world participated in similar workshops. Representative group films will be edited together to present an international voice of young animators. That group film will premiere in Annecy, France next June and in Hiroshima, Japan in August 2010.

Last year, Vinnedge and Morse taught a similar workshop for AWG, where youth in 13 countries created animations that presented a fresh idea for the Olympic competition. The resulting piece from Grand Rapids, “Imagining Olympics 2008,” won the best animation award at this year’s Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts. It was also screened at several international festivals, and was screened in China before the 2008 Olympic games.

For more information contact: Gretchen Vinnedge, (616) 459-4788, ext. 126, or [email protected] , or Deanna Morse at [email protected]