Platfrom: Why I didn't attend most competition screenings.

Top:Pat Smith, Lisa LaBracio and Biljana Labovic with cosmo. Bottom:Don Hertzfeldt, Amid Amidi, Pat Smith, Dan Mountain, and Lee Rubinstein at Frederator party.

First off, what a fantastic time i had at the first ever Platform Animation Festival, Portland. The people were great, and it really is a special city. The "Cartoons from Hell" screening I hosted went off better than I could imagine, and the special screenings, retrospectives and panels were top notch. OK. you know what really sucked? It was the fact that so many of the competition films were older films. I didn't go to a lot of the screenings because I had seen way over half the films. I don't mind showing films that are a few years old, that's what special programs and out of competition are for. But IN competition was films like the Igor Kovalyov film "Milch" or Run Wrakes "Rabbit"(which has screened at every possible venue world wide for the last two years), not only is it old, but it's LONG. I had to wonder how many quality currrent films they rejected in order to put that in competition. Here's the kicker, one of the grand prix winners was an installation piece by Gregory Barsamian that I had seen in a New York gallery over TEN YEARS AGO!!! are you telling me you can't find current work to put in competition, and put the older (albeit brilliant) work in out of comp programs(which there should always be plenty of, gotta respect the old).