MIKE JUDGE and DON HERTZFELDT present: THE ANIMATION SHOW October 2, 2003

Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt present: THE ANIMATION SHOW
Finally, there's an animation festival with the artists themselves at the helm! Kicking off in the fall of 2003 with its first North American tour, The Animation Show is a collection of the world's best animated short films, personally programmed by co-producers Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, Office Space) and Academy Award nominated animator Don Hertzfeldt (bitterfilms).

This year?s line-up spans eight countries and features everything from forgotten classics to the very latest in computer animation, with a trilogy of brand new cartoons by Don produced exclusively for the show, rare and never-before- seen animation by Mike, six Academy Award nominees, and plenty of surprises.

HISTORY
As animation continues to be plagued as the single most misunderstood film medium, the animated short film is sadly undervalued and underexposed in American cinema, despite widespread appreciation throughout the rest of the world. With luck, popular animated shorts may see some manner of very limited theatrical play, but are all too often relegated to only being found in chopped-up form on television, or worse, are only exhibited on the internet.

The first theatrical animation festival was born in 1976 with the launch of the Fantastic Animation Festival. This was the first show to create the now-universal "program on a flyer" and the first to receive a first-run 35mm theatrical release. The Fantastic Festival?s popularity helped pave the way shortly thereafter for similar programs throughout the 80?s and 90?s, including Spike and Mike?s Festival of Animation, the Tournee of Animation, and several others that came and went with varying success.

Every year, The Animation Show promises to put animated short films into more theaters than any other animation festival in American history. We aim to finally give these filmmakers the wide exposure their work deserves and to share these short masterpieces on the big screen, where they belong.

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