Indie Flavor, Green Focus at Animation Block Party

By Annaliese Griffin

Animation Block Party got its start in a bar. A series of bars, actually. Founder Casey Safron had been organizing semi-regular screenings of animation work by friends and students from the School of Visual Arts in bars and performance spaces around the city when an audience member, who was also a writer for The New York Times, complimented his curatorial powers and urged Safron to organize a larger, more formal event.

Calm before the storm: A scene from David Schlafman's global warming PSA, one of several in a program scheduled for this year's Animation Block Party (Photo: ABP)

Several months and hundreds of submissions later, the festival debuted on a rooftop in Bushwick. The rain that had worried Safron and his collaborators all day cleared just before the doors opened and more than 300 people crowded onto the roof, making the inaugural run an unqualified success. Now in its fourth year, Animation Block Party has become a full-fledged festival. It opens Friday as a Rooftop Films presentation at Automotive High School in Williamsburg.

Safron, who heads the animation department at SVA, still curates the festival, matching each program in the four-day festival to its screening space. “We get so many different genres between music videos, narrative shorts, gross-out cartoons, each night we try to really zone in on what’s right for that venue,” he recently told The Reeler. “Each night does have a feeling. I wouldn’t call it a theme, but we try to capitalize on each venue’s ethos.” In addition to the opening night in Williamsburg, which will feature narrative shorts and student work, the festival screens narrative shorts at the Pioneer Theater; experimental pieces and music videos at Galapagos Art Space, also in Williamsburg; and award-winning and international works -- including some Sundance selections -- at BAM.

The Sunday night program at Galapagos includes a presentation from the Lower East Side Ecology Center by an Al Gore-trained emcee. Animated public service announcements about global warming will be integrated into the ecology lesson. “We wanted something that would get a message to our audience, online and beyond,” Safron said about the festival green angle. “We really wanted to have a New York-based organization we could plug into our festival -- plug into the community so people would have a place they could go to if they were in New York and had questions. ... We opened up a call for people to submit public service announcements that they would like us to fund.”

Although it has grown exponentially over the past few years, Safron makes every effort to keep ABP true to its roots. “We’ve made a point to be very indie and grassroots and always keep the submission fees very low, and that’s something I’ve always emphasized,” he said. “I personally think that with a big festival, when you pay like $75 to submit your two-minute film, then what is the point of that?” Currently, students who submit early pay only $5 per entry.

Safron also emphasized that viewers who attend ABP screening get a lot of entertainment for their ticket. Most of the screenings include live music, the film program itself, plus an open bar and after-party. “How can you go wrong with that on a Friday night?”

Animation Block Party runs July 27-30 at Rooftop Films, the Pioneer Theater and BAM. Visit the festival's Web site for full details and program listings.

Posted at July 26, 2007 6:28 AM