A frog prince and cartoon commerce

Last year, Baton Rouge’s most renowned film event added a screenplay-pitching contest. The year before that debuted the pajama-primed Saturday morning animation celebration Cartoon-a-palooza. This year, for the first time, the Red Stick International Animation Festival hosts the American Animation Market so distributors, producers and content buyers from across the globe can attend and purchase rights to animated entertainment and children’s programming. It may start small in 2009, but this is a strategic bid to attract more visitors from outside the region, and a smart move that could position Baton Rouge as not only a place for animated entertainment, but also one for the lucrative commerce of cartoons.

“It’s more exciting than I could have imagined,” says Stacey Simmons, festival founder and director of the Baton Rouge Digital Industries Consortium. “It’s really affirming when the mayor, BRAF, LSU and Southern University show commitment to building this new sector of economic development through the arts. That’s very validating.”

One of the highlights of this month’s festival will be a visit from a team of artists and executives from Walt Disney. In January, Disney premiered select clips from its upcoming New Orleans-set feature film The Princess and the Frog. The Princess is a return to traditional hand-drawn, 2-D animation and hits theaters this December. But fans can catch a sneak peak, and maybe even the official trailer, at Red Stick.

It’s things like Disney lending total support that prove Baton Rouge’s festival is on track for bigger and better things each year.

“Our goal is to become the preeminent festival in the U.S.,” Simmons says. “We are already the largest. I just love what I do, and I am so proud of this community. You can’t put a price on the enthusiasm that’s been shown for the festival.”

The Red Stick Animation Festival takes place April 22–25. Multiple events and screenings will be held at the Shaw Center for the Arts, the Manship Theatre, the Louisiana Arts & Science Museum and the Old State Capitol. redstickfestival.org