Giannalberto Bendazzi

Book Presentation 1: Animation A World History (Vol.1-3)

Abstract

Dear Friends and colleagues,

The future is ours. We have been existing for 29 years, and progressing. We all have worked hard, unselfishly, united. Most of us are professors, and have had to submit the results of our research to the harshest critics: the young. We were not allowed to trick or to be unoriginal. Therefore we were selected in a Darwinist way to be nonconformist; and the progress of any science is based on nonconformism. But there is more: we also are still young, unbiased, wishful to be surprised by that cosmos that animation is. It is not by chance that the suggested topics to this Conference are so diverse and so many:

• Asian and Western animation history
• Global animation production and practice, artistic approaches, concepts and techniques in animation
• Cross-cultural collaboration and adaptation, animation and representation of national identity • Animation production (e.g. industrial contexts, auteurial production, practice and process, artistic methodolgy)
• Transcultural aspects of the animation production process
• Globalization and animation, artistic fusion concepts
• Interdisciplinary studies between animation and related fields
• Integration of theory and practice in animation research
• Animation and natural sciences
• Animation and the Gothic, animated fantasy and science fiction
• Adaptation for animation
• Animated documentary, animation and journalism
• Expanding animation-new forms of animation, hybridity of media, convergence of forms
• Experimental animation and visual music
• Bridging analog and digital, artistic innovation through new approaches
• Animation on the web-new animated forms using Internet technologies, micro narratives, animated gifs and ultra short formats
• Animation and gaming
• Beyond the event (e.g. archiving animation, local/national/international preservation initiatives, the scholarly community)

Nonconformist people in a largely unexplored cosmos. The cosmos of animation is there for us to explore. It is not an easy task, but until now we have shown that we were able to fulfill it. We will show that we are able to fulfill it again for many years to come.

Thank you.

Biography

Giannalberto Bendazzi is the author of Animation - A World History (2016), an encyclopaedic book in three volumes, 1456 pages, CRC, ISBN 113894307X, 9781138943070. His previously best-known work was Cartoons, a world history published in many languages. A film critic and historian, he has been studying animation since age 19 (he is now 70). In 2001, he edited Alexeieff, Itinéraire d’un maître - Itinerary of a Master, dedicated to one of the great masters of avant-garde cinema. The book on Quirino Cristiani, the author of the first animated feature films, was published in Spanish by Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires.

He extensively lectured on all continents, and taught at the Università degli Studi di Milano (2002-2009) and at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (2013-2015). A founding member of the Society for Animation Studies (1987), he is also adjunct professor at the Griffith University of Brisbane. Giannalberto Bendazzi wrote books on live-action cinema, too: on Woody Allen and Mel Brooks.