Folimage is a French animation studio, based in Bourg-lès-Valence, Drôme, France. It was founded in 1981 by Jacques-Rémy Girerd. The studio produces animation films for cinema and TV. In 1999, the company founded an animation school, La Poudrière, also in Valence. In 2009, Folimage and La Poudrière moved to La Cartoucherie, a former munitions factory in Bourg-lès-Valence.
The history of French animation is one of the longest in the world, as France has created some of the earliest animated films dating back to the late 19th century, and invented many of the foundational technologies of early animation.
Kirikou and the Sorceress is a 1998 French-language animated adventure fantasy film written and directed by Michel Ocelot. Drawn from elements of West African folk tales, it depicts how a newborn boy, Kirikou, saves his village from the evil witch Karaba. The film was originally released on 9 December 1998. It is a co-production between companies in France, Belgium and Luxembourg and animated at Rija Films' studio in Latvia and Studio Exist in Hungary.
Michel Ocelot is a French writer, designer, storyboard artist and director of animated films and television programs and a former president of the International Animated Film Association. Though best known for his 1998 debut feature Kirikou and the Sorceress, his earlier films and television work had already won Césars and British Academy Film Awards among others and he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur on 23 October 2009, presented to him by Agnès Varda who had been promoted to commandeur earlier the same year. In 2015 he got the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Festival of Animated Film - Animafest Zagreb.
Mac Guff is a French visual effects company based in Los Angeles, United States, Brussels, Belgium and Paris, France, where it is headquartered. Mac Guff specializes in the creation of computer graphics for commercials, music videos and feature films. 270 graphic designers, VFX supervisors and producers, computer engineers, and administrators are usually working on over 100 million files. In mid-2011, the company was split in two, and the animation department was acquired by Illumination Entertainment. The new company was named Illumination Mac Guff and has capital worth 3.2 million euro.
The Monk and the Fish is a 1994 animated short film made by Michaël Dudok de Wit at the studio Folimage.
Ciné si is a 1989 French silhouette animation television series conceived, written and directed by Michel Ocelot and realised at La Fabrique, consisting of short fairy tale and retrofuture stories performed by the same animated "actors". A critical success but commercial failure at the time, no further episodes were commissioned beyond the initial eight but following the success of Ocelot's Kirikou and the Sorceress six were edited into the 2000 compilation movie Princes et Princesses, in which form they finally saw wide exposure and acclaim both in France and internationally; a further episode was included in a home release of short works in 2008 but one remains unavailable for public consumption.
Kirikou and the Wild Beasts is a 2005 French animated feature film. It premiered at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival on 13 May and, unlike its predecessor, received only festival screenings in all English-speaking territories. It was released on English-subtitled DVD-Video in the United States by KimStim on 29 July 2008 as Kirikou and the Wild Beast.
Catherine Jacob is a French film and theatre actress who has won a César Award for her role in Life Is a Long Quiet River (1988), and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Tatie Danielle (1990), Merci la vie (1991) and Neuf mois (1994). She has been two-time president of the Lumières Award. She is known for her voice and her charisma.
Le Petit Cirque et autres contes is a 1994 French package film. It is 50 minutes long and contains the following seven short films for young children and their families from the Folimage studio:
- Au clair de la lune, a stop motion animation by Pascal Le Nôtre
- Le Petit Cirque de toutes les couleurs, a stop motion animation by Jacques-Rémy Girerd
- Nos adieux au music-hall, a pastamation by Laurent Pouvaret
- Le Prince des joyaux, a silhouette animation by Michel Ocelot
- Le Wall, a clay animation by Jean-Loup Felicioli
- Paroles en l'air, a traditional animation in charcoal by Sylvain Vincendeau
- Le Moine et le poisson, a traditional animation in India ink by Michaël Dudok de Wit
Dragons et Princesses is a 2010 French computer animation television program written, storyboarded and directed by Michel Ocelot and produced at Studio O for Canal+. It is a fairy tale anthology series of ten further 13-minute episodes in the format established in Ciné si, though made in computer animation rendered in a silhouette instead of traditional silhouette animation made with backlit cut-outs. Five of the episodes are edited, with a feature-exclusive sixth, into the 2011 stereoscopic compilation movie Tales of the Night.
Princes et Princesses is a 2000 compilation film by French animator Michel Ocelot.
Kirikou and the Men and Women is a 2012 French animated children's film written and directed by Michel Ocelot. The second sequel to Ocelot's 1998 film Kirikou and the Sorceress, following Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005), the film is an anthology, telling five tales woven together by a loose framing device.
Didier Brunner is a French film producer.
Nora Aceval is a traditional storyteller and writer from Algeria.
Jean Douchet was a French film director, historian, film critic and teacher who began his career in the early 1950s at Gazette du Cinéma and Cahiers du cinéma with members of the future French New Wave.
Les Armateurs is a French film production company focused on animation. It was founded by Didier Brunner in 1994 and is based in Paris. It produces feature films, short films and television series. Brunner served as the president of the company until 2014, when he was succeeded by Reginald de Guillebon. He retains a role as consultant.
Georges Chaulet was a French writer most famous for the series Fantômette, a series he created in 1961. His books were destined for young readers and Fantômette featured a female superhero for the first time in French literature. He is also the author of Les 4 As, a series created in 1957. He also released Le Petit Lion children's book series.
Michel de Roy was a French writer.
