No, apparantly, according to the SF Film Society. As a part of their recently-launched SF360 campaign, they're pleased as punch to announce three new fests, and boy they're really cool. One of them is going to be a collection of youth media from around the world, the first of its kind. They'll be treating the young auteurs just like grown-up filmmakers, with screenings and audience Q&A and valorization and those little "official selection" bages with the ivy leaves curling up around the sides. "The only difference," SF Exec Direc Graham Leggat tells us, "is that they'll have their parents with them."
The second new fest is even more ambitious: it's animated. But it's not just a collection of screenings, oh no. It's a conference, with workshops and speakers and discussions and probably some high-falutin' or-durves. And it's also a market, where industry-types and schmooze and network and examine each others' business cards before proceeding to eat a small fortune's-worth of shrimp. We've covered animation collections at fests in the past, but the prospect of having a single huge cartoony blowout has lifted our hats right off our heads. Or maybe that's just the very strong air conditioning.