Usually when you're thinking animation cinema, you're thinking Disney or Pixar. These two gigantic studios are for now many years, making high quality movies. The pioneer, Disney, began with Snow White and the seven Dwarfs in 1937. A movie made with the purest classic animation technic. They passed then to 3D with Toy Story that marked the beginning of there collaboration with the Pixar studios which started to make 3D films straight away. But compared to other studios, their work seems pretty impersonal (animation technics traditional and 3D are always the same and many stories are adapted from already existing tales). We will now do a little tour of the studios that haven't anything to envy to Disney and/or Pixar.

Japan:

Japan is one of the leaders of animation. The biggest studio of "japanimation" is Ghibli. In this studio created by Ayao Miazaki, numerous talented creators are for now 20 years, making films that are little pieces of art. The first one called Princess Mononoke was a great success with incomparably beautiful settings and super fluid animation. In this studio's films, we can always see a huge poetic dimension in landscapes, drawings or music. For example the last featured film of Hisao Takahata: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya ; the usual drawing style of the Ghibli studio is replaced by calligraphy-like drawings which evolves with the main character emotions.  Smaller studios such as Madhouse, are gaining in notoriety with the diffusion of their last films Wolfs children, Paprika and Your name.

 

Europe:

Animation is well represented in the European countries; many studios from many countries are collaborating on numerous films such as Song of the See (2014). This film is cooperation between France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark. It's more than ten studios that worked on this film. Some other studios such as La Fabrique are making a very few but always excellent films; we can name Kerity and the Tales House, Princes and Princesses and Santa's apprentice. The Eastern Europe countries are making great films too. Denmark, Hungary and Poland for examples with the stunning films Longways North and The Sun Queen and The Convention.

 

South America:

Finally, a single film, which had won the public prize at the International Animation Festival of Annecy: The Boy and the World. This film, which took 7 years to create, is the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. I laughed, sighed and cried while watching it. The only thing I've had to say about it was "Wow" at the end. Entirely made with child-like drawing this film is making the viewer see the world through the eyes of a little boy who is going to the city in order to see his father. In this film, boats are ducks and trains became caterpillars; the music is made of colourful bubbles floating through the sky and forming a majestic phoenix; the tanks became elephants and the deforestation machines became giant crocodiles. 

 

Disney and Pixar studios are making wonderful movies that are made to entertain adults and children. But we cannot forget the existence of other studios in other countries that can match and even surpass these American leaders.

​

Zoé N.