Toon fans rejoice! The Animation Show of Shows will soon be
coming to a theater near you.
Thanks to a successful KickstartASOS.com campaign (which
still has a few hours left to run, by the way), this animation industry
favorite will now transition from being an insider-only exclusive to becoming a
program that film fans around the world can participate in and enjoy.
For those of you who don’t know: The Animation Show of Shows
has long been Ron Diamond‘s baby. For the past 16 years, this veteran animation
producer has circled the globe seeking out the very best new animated short
films. Which sounds like it might be a fun way for a cinema fan to spend their
time, but is actually a quite challenging task.
“Just recently, I sat through a screening of over 200
student films. All because I was looking for those one or two short animated
films that I might consider adding to the line-up on my next Animation Show of
Shows,” Ron explained during a recent phone interview.”
And previously —
once Diamond has selected all of that year’s animated gems — he’d then truck
this feature-length compilation to animation studios like Disney, Pixar and
Blue Sky. All with the hope that — by exposing these creatives to what the
next generation of animators was up to — he’d then inspire these folks to explore
unexpected ideas.”
“And while I don’t mean to brag, I think that I’ve got
a pretty good eye for this stuff. 29 of the films that I’ve showcased in
previous Animation Show of Shows have gone on to get Academy Award nominations.
And 9 of those animated short films then went on to win the Oscar,” Ron
continued.
But after 16 years of annually assembling this great collection
of animated short films which was then meant to educate & inspire industry
insiders, Diamond was looking to broaden his horizons. He wanted the general
public to now be able to get in on the fun. Which is why Ron set up a
not-for-profit organization that would then make it possible to the Animation
Show of Shows to expand its mission.
“After all, it’s one thing to show these new animated short films to
industry insiders who then might have some knowledge of who these fledgling
filmmakers are, the reputations of their teachers and/or their independent work.
And it’s an entirely different thing to show these great new animated short
films to an audience that’s going in cold. That has absolutely no context when
it comes to who these filmmakers are and where the ideas for each of these new
animated shorts may have come from,” Diamond stated.
Ron Diamond
That was what really drove Ron to get a Kickstarter campaign
going for the Animation Show of Shows. If he was going to transform this
showcase of new animated short films into something that members of the general
film-going public could genuinely understand and appreciate … Well, that then
meant that Diamond would have to craft profiles of the talented individuals who
had created these animated short films. And given that Ron prides himself on
always putting together a program that represents what is going on
internationally in animation that year, that then meant Diamond was going to
need to send film crews around the globe to create these contextual pieces that
would profile that year’s top animators.
Thanks to the generous pledges of the people who supported
Ron’s vision for a more ambitious, broader reaching Animation Show of Shows,
those profiles will now be included in Diamond’s next feature-length compilation
of the finest animated shorts from around the world. Not only that, but Ron
will be using these funds to expand into the field of restoration. Singling out
great animated short films from the past that need to be preserved and shared.
By the way, if you’re headed to San Diego next week for the
2015 edition of Comic-Con and want to get a sense of the sort of show that Ron
Diamond plans on presenting very soon at a theater near you, the 16th Annual
Animation Show of Shows will be presented in Hall H on Friday, July 10th from
10 – 11:30 a.m. Hopefully — as part of the Q & A session that’s supposed
to follow this presentation — Diamond will then discuss his post-KickstartASOS.com
plans for this award-winning series of animated short films.
This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on Thursday, July 2, 2015