Animators could win a trip to Cannes Film Festival and $8,000 (over £5,000) with a new filmmaking competition by carmaker Chevrolet.

Animation Forum WM is working with video crowd-sourcing agency MOFilm for a series of big-name, film and animation competitions.

"It's a huge opportunity to work with Jon Landau, producer of Titanic and Avatar, as we asked him to write what Find New Roads meant to him – based on his life, experiences, and successes," according to MOFilm, "We are looking for filmmakers (in this case animators) to capture his interpretation and create the visual storytelling that will bring his words to life in film."

NHS Blood and Transplant has launched a short-film competition urging people to share their organ donation wishes with their family and friends. The competition, ‘Organ donation through A Lens’ will focus on the importance of having ‘The Donation Conversation’ and will culminate in the launch of National Transplant Week which runs 8 to 14 July. The winning film will encourage more people to sign up to the NHS Organ Donor Register and more crucially highlight the importance of talking to family and friends about your wishes. [More]

Directors behind new Monty Python-themed animated feature, A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, are talking about their new film on Saturday 23rd March at Birmingham City University's School of Art, Margaret Street, as part of Flatpack Festival.

Hosted by Animation Forum West Midlands, Directors Ben Timlett and George Sander-Jackson will be talking about collaborative movie-making and mixing multiple animation styles, after working with fourteen different animation companies on their latest release.

Aardman co-founder and Director of their latest Oscar-nominated feature The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists, Peter Lord, takes you behind the scenes of Aardman’s latest film in this free, after-work event in Birmingham city centre this March from Animation Forum WM.

What do you get when you shove* a dozen animators into a room for a weekend? Well, we don’t really know either, but we hope an animation short film or two comes out of it anyway, when Animation Forum WM’s free, three-day event, AnimationJam between Friday 22^nd and Sunday 24^th February 2013 hits NTI Birmingham.

Submissions are currently being accepted for two unique open exhibitions, Touch Interactive 2013, for interactive artists and Screening 2013, for those working in film and video.

Now in their third year, both exhibitions will be displayed on our touch screens throughout the gallery from 13 January to 5 May 2013, with the deadline for submissions being 13 January 2013.

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