By Damiete Braide
At the just concluded Lagos International Festival of Animation, LIFANIMA, winners have emerged in a keenly contested animation movies competition organised by USP Brand Management in collaboration with the Lagos State Film and Video Censors Board and the Embassy of France in Nigeria which held at Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi Lagos.
The three-day event had youths, key players in the creative industry, financial sector, government and diplomatic community in attendance.
The winners are Bukola Oluwadarasimi Samuel’s Lost In the Earth in the category of Best Visual Effects, Miriam Nwosah’s Trash Monster in the category of Best Stop Motion Animation, Isabella Bosmos’ Counting Sheep in the category of Best 3D Animation and Ayodele Elegba Ajaka’s Lost In Rome in the category of Best 2D Animation repectively.
The festival opened on Tuesday, October 30, 2023 with screening of selected films from 24 African countries that sent submissions for this year’s edition.
The screening was followed by a panel session on Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises, I-DICE initiative of the Federal Government. The program is a critical intervention in the creative and tech sector with a fund of $617 million which will soon be made available to enterprises in the sector. Top officials of Bank of Industry, managers of the fund were on the panel to throw more light on the program and answer questions from the audience which consisted mostly of practitioners in animation film and visual effects.
The bank was represented by The Group Head, of the Creative Industry Group, Mr Promise George and National Coordinator of I-DICE, Mr Ifeoluwa Adebayo. Also on the panel were Mr Mbuotidem Johnson, Managing Director, Basement Animation and Mr Sam Onyemelukwe, Senior Vice President, Global Business at TRACE TV.
While on the second day, Wednesday, November, 1, 2023, there was virtual panel sessions which featured past winners of LIFANIMA Animation Awards such as Tunde Oluwa of Black Ice Studios, Esther Kemi Gbadamosi of Radioxity Media, Richard Oboh of Orange VFX Studios and Sara Laubscher who won in the 3D Animation category at LIFANIMA 2019. That session was tagged The Winners Roundtable. This was followed by Ayodele Elegba of Spoof Animation, who spoke on Kickstarting Your Project, and threw light on the ways and means of fundraising for film production. The final session on the day was Animation Production Pipeline with veteran American animation director, Artie Romero as keynote speaker.
On the third day, Thursday, November, 2, 2023, the event opened with a cocktail party and screening of animation films and followed by the award ceremony.
LIFANIMA has in the past 7 seven years grown to become one of the leading animation festivals in Africa attracting more than 1000 entries from more than 100 countries annually.