The aim of BALTIC ANIMATION MEET-UP is to create a space and forum for participants to get to know one another, discuss and agree on new joint initiatives on a Baltic scale.
To change it up a bit, this year’s Meet-Up will expand outside the Baltic region. Animation professionals will have the chance to learn more about the Canadian animation industry at an in-depth conversation with co-producers Marc Bertrand (NFB / Canada) and Vladimir Leschiov (Lunohod / Latvia).
Bertrand and Leschiov co-produced RAINY DAYS together, a short film directed by Leschiov himself. While audiences have the possibility to see the film in the SHORT RIGA PERSONA programme, this industry event will introduce attendees to the Canadian animation scene and concentrate on the co-production opportunities between these two very different countries. The focus will be on various sides of production, like financing, as well as the more creative aspects of co-production. The conversation will also explain how the partnership worked from a practical point of view.
There will be time during the conversation for questions from the audience. Feel free to send your questions in advance to Project Manager Lauma Kaudzīte (lauma@rigaiff.lv).
Marc Bertrand joined the NFB’s French Animation Studio as a producer in 1998. Since then, he has earned credits on more than 100 films, many of them award winners. He has worked with Theodore Ushev for many years, producing some of the filmmaker’s most important works, including Blind Vaysha (2016), which earned an Oscar® nomination in 2017, and The Physics of Sorrow (2019), the Cristal Award-winner for best short film at Annecy in 2020. Bertrand also produced Patrick Doyon’s Oscar®-nominated short Sunday (2011). Over the years, he has worked with both emerging and veteran directors, including Jacques Drouin, Diane Obomsawin, Andreas Hykade, Michelle and Uri Kranot, and Janice Nadeau.
Vladimir Leschiov is an artist, animator, film director, producer and founded the animation studio Lunohod in 2007. The way in which Leschiov explores new avenues and universal themes has attracted a large audience internationally, which now even exceeds his local audience. The director’s animated shorts exude a familiar warmth and with his characteristic attention to detail he creates symbolic strands of narrative. Leschiov usually works with classical animation techniques using watercolours and sometimes even experiments with coffee and tea. He does, however, also use digital techniques. Like each of his films, each scene tells an independent story; every frame is at the same time a small work of art and a universe of its own.
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