After being a member of the International Jury at Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival in 2016, Giannalberto Bendazzi, one of the leading authorities on animation, will take the stage of the Auditorium Santa Margherita again to talk about his new book: Animation. A World History, published in two massive volumes, which has already become a fundamental work in this field. The audience will have the opportunity to enjoy a selection of scenes taken from significant animation movies, chosen and narrated by Bendazzi himself.
Animation. A World History is the ultimate guide to a vast universe that, thanks to the triumph of giants such as Pixar and DreamWorks and to the widespread use of digital special effects, seems to have become the leading model in contemporary cinema. Giannalberto Bendazzi’s work encompasses the history of animation from its origins – flipbooks, magic lanterns, shadow play – to the most recent – mass and digital – developments. He guides the readers into the discovery of animation from all over the world, from Russia to Latin America, from Africa to Asia, from Japan to the United States, introducing a multitude of artists, who may not be renowned to the largest audience but who are as worthy of consideration as the great Walt Disney, Miyazaki, Bozzetto, Cavandoli, Avery, Hanna & Barbera, Lassater themselves.
Born in Ravenna and raised in Milan, Giannalberto Bendazzi started his career as a journalist and as an independent cinema critic. Although his name is today linked mainly with the animation field, in which he has become the most important authority at an international level, many of his studies about live action cinema are true pillars in the Italian publishing history, such as Woody Allen (1976), the first book ever of the kind, and Mel Brooks – L’ultima follia di Hollywood (1977). Since the 1990s, he has mostly been involved in teaching. He began his teaching career at Milan University, being the first professor of History of Animation in Italy, and then he taught in Australia and Singapore. He writes and organizes several reviews and retrospectives, some of which are used internationally for study purposes and analysis, such as those ones about Alexandre Alexeieff and Bruno Bozzetto. He has been a juror for several international festivals and was the “Grand Témoin” at the Clermont-Ferrand festival (2003). He has authored several books and articles, published on historical research magazines and animation magazines. Some of his most renowned books are Cartoon – One hundred Years of Cinema Animation (1988, published in five languages) and Animation – A World History (2015), a history of world animation in three volumes. Thanks to his activity, he has won several awards at a national and international level, such as the Award of Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Animation Studies (2002).
