Guest author post by Carlota Coronado
A few days ago I wrote a post on this same blog about the rules for the 2017 Goya Awards for animated shorts and how little sense it makes to have a filter for so few short films. Thanks to Bernabé Rico—whom I also thank for replying to my emails and for his work in the short filmmakers’ associations—I started crunching the numbers.
Bernabé asked me if I could take a close look at the data I referred to in my post about the limited presence of Spanish animation at the short film festivals chosen by the Academy for its list.
With these more accurate figures, it is easier to get an idea of the situation of animated shorts, which is very different from that of fiction shorts:
Festival and Animation Figures
The tables you can see are the result of this analysis. The conclusions are clear: for the 2017 Goya Awards, only between 6 and 8 shorts will be able to enter. As of today, only 6 pass the established filters: it does not even reach the 10 on the shortlist.
Obviously, for the Academy it is less work to watch 6 shorts than more than double that. But doesn’t this take away the opportunity for many shorts to make it onto the shortlist? For any short film production company, making that shortlist is already a prize in itself, in addition to the publicity it can bring.
Why have a shortlist of 6 animated shorts when it could be 10 titles? I come back to the same question: why the filter if it turns out that the animated shorts eligible for the 2017 Goyas total 16?
So far in 2016, only 9 shorts have been certified; the other 7 were certified between October 1 and December 31, 2016. Some figures may be off because, except for a few shorts, I do not have exact confirmation of the certification date, but this variation could increase by 2 the total number of animated shorts certified for the 2017 Goyas.
As I indicated in my previous post, the list of festivals included for animation does not help to pass the filter, due to the limited presence of animation: in 14 of the 34 festivals, the award went to an international short (which also does not help fiction or documentary), 9 were awards for best fiction short and only 5 for animation, because they competed in a specific Spanish animation section.
As for selections, things are not very positive for animation either: only 88 selections of Spanish animated shorts (many of them are the same shorts repeated at different festivals) out of 871 shorts selected in the 34 scoring festivals. Some festivals, even with an international animation section, do not have any Spanish animated short among their 2015 selections. Many, in the official section, have between 1 and 3 shorts, and some others, none.
My question is this: why have these festivals been included on the list? What requirements do they have to meet? I understand that Huesca, which is on the Oscar list, is an A-category festival, like Gijón or Sitges, and therefore that it is on the Goya list, but if they hardly select any animated shorts, why are they there?
What’s more, sometimes there is one or no Spanish fiction short. I understand that they are included on the list because they are festivals that meet certain quality requirements, but if there is no room in their programming for Spanish shorts (regardless of genre), I think it makes little sense for them to count towards the Goyas: it makes sense for the Oscars, but not for a national award if they do not have a specific prize for national shorts.
No one would think that a short film festival with only a national scope should count towards the Oscars, so the same should happen the other way around: it should be necessary for it to have a specific Goya prize that only Spanish shorts can be eligible for.
It is clear that the festivals that have been added meet certain quality guarantees, but it is also true that for Spanish festivals, being a partner festival of the Academy of Cinema and the Goya Awards brings prestige and is a seal of quality. And in this sense, I think they should be required to give more space to national short films: if a festival counts towards animation, it should create an award for best national animation (without financial remuneration, simply so it can open the door to more shorts).
It is not something so strange: at the Short Film Week of the Community of Madrid, a special prize for the Goyas has been created: whoever wins it can enter. At international festivals, perhaps a specific prize of this type should be created to prevent, across 34 festivals, 14 awards going to foreign shorts that cannot compete for the Goyas.
Perhaps there are better ideas than this. I do not have all the answers and surely together we can contribute many things. For me, the important thing was to bring out the figures for animated shorts to highlight a reality and try to change it and improve it. I think that, in order to sit down and talk with the Academy about the rules for shorts, it is very important to have data in hand like this.
I also invite everyone to suggest ideas about possible changes that could be introduced to improve not only animation, but short films in general.