SA animation wins Hida award
10 June 2005
South Africa's first two-dimensional animated short film, "Ummemo: The Echo", won a special jury award at the 2005 Hida International Animation Festival, held in Tokyo, Japan in March.
The 12-minute film, produced by The Video Lab and Eject Media for a Welsh television channel, tells the story of a group of animals that live near a cave they call "Ummemo" [the echo]. Both the story and its execution have a distinctly African flavour.
Video Lab's managing director, Dave Keet, told the Saturday Star that this was "proof to the world that, in the areas of animation and special effects, South Africans are among the best".
The Video Lab is one of the country's leading post-production houses, having worked on a number of full-length features, including the recent films "Red Dust", "Mr Drum" and "The Story of an African Farm".
The Hida International Animation Festival of Folktales and Fables aims to bring together the old and the new,
heartwarming fairy tales and modern-day animation.
The theme of this year's festival was on ko chi shin, an old Japanese expression meaning, "by examining how predecessors interacted with their surroundings, we can consider how to approach the future."
This year's festival attracted 170 entries from 24 countries.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
| 
