4/6/2024
Generation
For the fourth consecutive year, Next Lab Generation, the annual event that brings to the forefront the use of new technologies in the production of animation and video games, with funding from the ICAA and the main sponsorship of the Community of Madrid, among others, will be present at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The Spanish project Catwalk, the Brazilian Martina e Guará, and the Italian The Cutting of the Forest were awarded by the jury last March. The three winning projects received €8,000 in development assistance, three months of mentoring, a travel grant and accreditation for a representative of the project to present it at the French festival, an international benchmark in the industry.
The jury, made up of Morten Thorning from Denmark, Pablo Vazquez from Argentina, Ruxandra G. Popescu from Northern Ireland, Tania Palma from Madrid and Will Anderson from Scotland, also awarded a special mention to Welcome to Fucking Rainbowland by Nuño Benito and Nacho Subirats, so the Spanish series project will also be pitched at the festival.
The four works will be presented in the Next Lab Generation space at the prestigious festival on Friday, June 14 at 9:15 am at the Rotonde de l'Europe, Imperial Palace. During the presentation, they will share the results of the seven-week workshop and discuss their experience and creative process introducing technologies such as VR and real-time rendering engines into their workflows. The presentation will also include the participation of José Luis Farias, director of Next Lab Generation, who will review with the professionals attending the festival information about the past edition and the future of this workshop which, after having mentored 70 projects from almost 30 countries, was established in its last edition as a launching pad in artistic, logistical and economic terms.
In this edition, XR technologies will be more present than ever at the festival, which launches the XR&Games Area, a space open to all registered participants especially focused on video games and immersive experiences. This place designed for discovery and networking within the Chambre de Métiers et de l'Artisanat (near the Imperial Palace) will bring together professionals from the animation and new media sectors and will act as a catalyst for innovation. In addition to a Video Game Showroom that will present independent games for four days, the new venue will feature conferences, pitches and round tables. The complete program can be found here.
Present again at the festival will be IBERMEDIA NEXT, the line of grants promoted by the ICAA (Ministry of Culture) through the Ibermedia Program in alliance with the Quirino Awards and the Ibero-American Animation League, which was launched just over a year ago as part of the Next Lab Generation event program. IBERMEDIA NEXT is a new initiative of the IBERMEDIA Program designed to promote innovation and collaboration in the strategic sector of Ibero-American animation. Also on Friday, June 14, but at 11:15 am, a conference will take place in which attendees will be able to learn more about the results of the first edition of the call as well as new developments. The conference will be given by José Luis Farias and Jara Ayúcar (Director of Marketing Policies at ICAA).
The fourth edition of Next Lab Generation is possible thanks to the financial support of the Institute for Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) as part of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan promoted by the European Union; the main sponsorship of the Community of Madrid through the Council for Culture; the participation of the Ministry of Culture and IBERMEDIA NEXT; and the collaboration of Madrid Film Office, HP-AMD, Annecy Festival, FOM and The AI Revolution.