Four-time Oscar-winning director to receive Lifetime Achievement Award, deliver closing keynote address.
VANCOUVER -- SPARK ANIMATION will honor Oscar-winning director Nick Park with a Lifetime Achievement Award at its 10th edition, running October 25-28 in Vancouver, BC. Previous recipients of the award include Glen Keane (2017) and Marv Newland (2015). At the ceremony, to be held on Thursday, October 25, Women in Animation (WIA) will announce its annual Diversity Awards.
A partnership of Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH and Spark CG, SPARK ANIMATION 2018 includes a Film Festival, Business Symposium, Career Fair, and two-day Conference on October 27 & 28. Park, the celebrated director of Academy Award-winning shorts Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, and, most recently, the stop-motion animated feature Early Man, will also deliver the closing keynote address at the Conference.
New for this year, the SPARK ANIMATION 2018 Film Festival is partnering with Science World to screen Canadian feature film Sgt. Stubby, as well as two programs of short films, and two keynote conference speakers in its 200-seat theatre, free as a bonus with the cost of regular admission to Science World. Ted Mathot, director of the Pixar short film Auntie Edna (of The Incredibles and Incredibles 2 fame) and producer Becky Neiman of Pixar’s short film Bao will speak at Science World. The venue’s The Science Behind Pixar exhibition will be on display until January 6, 2019.
Nick Park
Other SPARK highlights at the Vancity Theatre are: the International Premiere of Korean feature The Moon Hidden in the Woods; the North America Premiere of The Last Fiction (Iran); the Canadian Premiere of Modest Heroes: Studio Ponoc Short Theatre, Volume 1, a program of shorts by Studio Ponoc (Japan); the Canadian Premiere of Funan (France/ Belgium/Cambodia) directed by Dennis Do, who will be a SPARK guest; and Another Day of Life (Poland/Spain), about a Polish journalist covering the war in Angola.
SPARK ANIMATION will also be presenting four shorts by the National Film Board: Animal Behaviour by the Oscar-winning duo Alison Snowden and David Fine, on opening night; the world premiere of The Zoo by Vancouver director Julia Kwan; Ann Marie Fleming’s A Short Film About Tegan and Sara; and Shop Class by Hart Snider, voiced by Fred Ewanuick of Corner Gas.
The SPARK Animation Conference and Career Fair will be at Emily Carr University’s Reliance Theatre (520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver). The Festival’s Opening Night Awards Ceremony will be at the Scotiabank Theatre.
Source: SPARK ANIMATION 2018
