Nancy Denney Phelps
After Marco de Blois of the Cinémathèque Québécoise in 2022, the festival decided to give this year’s Giannalberto Bendazzi Award to Nancy Denney-Phelps.
Last year for the first time the Paris International Animation Film Festival awarded an honorary award. This award will be given each year to a person that make us, by their work, have a better understanding and knowledge of this wonderful world of animated cinema - and enjoy it even more! Festival organizers, Journalists, Specialists, Cinema Managers, Researchers… It’s those go-between persons that we want to put a spotlight on. Because they have such a passion of the art of frame by frame cinema, we can rediscover unknown treasures of the past, the gems of today and the future great names of animation.
Marco de Blois was the first to receive the Prize. And this year we wanted to award somebody with the same touching and passionate personality. The same enthusiasm to share the knowledge, the passion for animation and for the people who are making this cinema.
Nancy Denney-Phelps does that so well with her writings in different publications but especially with her blog on AWN (Animation World Network). Her writings are so lively, mixing reviews of films, reports of conferences and parties, sharing the atmosphere of each festival… and always with a lot of great photos taken on the spot.
And when you have the pleasure to attend a festival with her, you are lucky to enjoy her communicative joy of being here and her huge culture of animation. And that culture, because of people like Nancy Denney-Phelps, is always in motion because she can talk about all the festivals she went to and all the great people she met but also talk about her last Coup de Coeur for a film.
And she uses this knowledge and this passion in jury and selection committees in a lot of festivals.
In giving the Giannalberto Bendazzi Award 2023 to Nancy Denney-Phelps, we wish to highlight the importance, the necessity and the joy of sharing this passion we have for animation.
