The round table, organised by the Catalonian Audiovisual Cluster, examined the sector’s current situation with producers, distributors, schools and festivals
This year, the session organised by FILMETS with the support of the Catalonian Audiovisual Cluster discussed the Catalonian audiovisual animation industry, ‘a very necessary debate’, as the moderator Mar Sáez pointed out as the event began. The debate was presented by Eduard Gil, cluster manager, and Josep Viñeta Balsells, managing director of Badalona Comunicació.
During the work session, several topics were discussed, including the strategy that Catalonian companies need to adopt for the renewal and commitment of the sector; the future of professionals and their training; creativity, talent and content; and especially television companies and public authorities as engines of this industry; as well as online cinema platforms and the export of Catalonian animation output.
Mar Sáez, Jordi Mendieta, Fàtima Vilà, Juan Carlos Concha, Xavier Romero and Marta Alonso participated in the round table.
Fàtima Vilà, CEO of FX Animation Barcelona 3D & Film School, spoke of the need to have more professionals in the sector. ‘At the school, we continuously adapt to current needs. We invest in R&D and teacher training’. ‘Being a non-regulated school, we can adapt the syllabus to the needs of companies’, she added.
Fàtima Vilà went on to say that ‘many students go to countries like the United Kingdom or Canada, or go to work in large companies that offer them good salaries’.
For his part, Juan Carlos Concha, a cartoonist, producer and director of Apemanstudio, commented that ‘when students leave school they are not prepared for work. There are specialisation courses that work much better’. The relationship between schools and companies was a key point in the first part of the debate.
Lack of funding and investment was also a topic of debate during the round table. Jordi Mendieta, an audiovisual producer, said: ‘I still don’t see an animation industry here. We are not aware of it’. ‘Animation is not a genre, it is a technique. To boost the sector, we need to go to private industry,’ he went on to say. Fàtima Vilà added that ‘today’s young people consume a lot of audiovisual through video-on-demand platforms’.
Marta Alonso, a producer at Teidees, suggested changing the name of the session to ‘the suffering of the mentoring industry in Catalonia’, because we have to talk about a sector with a major lack of investment and people to train’.
Xavier Romero, from Televisió de Catalunya, talked about the preference of Catalonian television for children’s and youth series ‘because it is a terrain where we can have greater influence and where we feel more comfortable’.
