Oscar-winning Animator Torill Kove Honoured by SPARK ANIMATION
Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove was recently honoured in Vancouver by SPARK ANIMATION, Western Canada's largest celebration of animation presented by the Spark Computer Graphics Society.
Kove was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of animation, as well as this year's Canadian Film Prize for her new short film Maybe Elephants, co-produced by Mikrofilm and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
This latest honour for Maybe Elephants brings the total to four awards and mentions to date. Other awards include the Short Film Audience Prize at South Korea’s Bucheon International Animation Festival and Best Nordic-Baltic Animated Youth Film at Norway’s Fredrikstad Animation Festival.
“I’m honoured and deeply touched to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Spark Animation festival, " Torill said. " This is an occasion for me to reflect on how fortunate I’ve been to have a career as an animation director with the National Film Board of Canada and the Norwegian animation studio Mikrofilm. I owe these two animation studios and everybody who has collaborated with me on my films a great debt of gratitude. I interpret this award both as an acknowledgement of my work so far and as encouragement to keep making more films.”
Maybe Elephants is also the fourth collaboration with the NFB and Norway's Mikrofilm and Torill Kove. This relationship has spanned two decades and produced three Oscar-nominated short films including the 2007 Oscar-winner The Danish Poet.
Maybe Elephants continues its festival world tour this month with the London International Animation Festival, taking place online and in cinemas from November 22 to December 1. The film has been selected for over 20 festivals so far including the Annecy International Animation Festival, Animation is Film, AFI Fest, Toronto International Film Festival and the Ottowa International Animation Festival.
The film follows three rebellious teenage daughters, who move to bustling Nairobi with their mum and dad- and the family will never be the same. The NFB describes the film as "a playful and loving autobiographical homage to family, adolescence and the therapeutic power of memories, however unreliable."
The short was made in collaboration with several Kenyan-Canadians, who played the Kenyan roles and with whom Kove consulted on Swahili language and Kenyan culture.
Torill Kove is a Norweigian-born animator now living and working in Canada. She has been nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short, winning for the first time with The Danish Poet. Kove's films are known for their expressive designs and her playful and poignant autobiographical themes.
