All Things Must Pass: 9 Years of Animation Chico

We started Animation Chico for a simple reason. There was no outlet here for animators to show their work.

Chico has never been short on artists. What it did not have was a room where someone who spent eight months on a two minute stop motion piece could sit in the dark and watch strangers react to it. That gap bothered us enough to try to fill it, and years later I am still glad we did. Here is what the festival taught me, including the parts I didn't plan for.

The first year was the easy one

We held the first festival at the El Rey theater and over 300 people showed up. I want to be honest about how that felt, because it was not pure celebration. It was closer to panic. We had guessed that an audience for animation existed in a town this size, the guess turned out to be right, and now we had to do it again. Standing in the back of the El Rey theater, the thought running through my head was not "we did it." It was "how do we ever capture that twice."

The room answered the question

The lesson of that first year was not about programming or marketing. It was about the town.

There was an audience for animation in Chico. Not a niche crowd that had to be talked into it, and not just the animators themselves and their friends. Regular people came out on a weeknight for short animated films from around the world, and they stayed through the whole show. Once you know that, everything else is logistics. You stop asking whether the thing should exist and start asking how to keep it good. Over nine years we gave out 27 awards across 2D, 3D, stop motion, experimental, and student work, and the student category consistently drew some of the strongest submissions we received.

Then fate intervened... Twice

You can plan a festival down to the minute. You can't plan around everything.

The first major disruption was the disastrous Camp Fire. When it came through Paradise, we were a few months out from planning our next show and neither of us knew what we could meaningfully do to help. What we landed on was straightforward: every dollar of proceeds from that year's festival went to families affected by the fire. It didn't feel like enough, but it was what we had to give.

The second was COVID. It forced the entire festival online with almost no runway, and we did what we could to make watching from a couch feel like an event rather than a link in an inbox. Filmmakers were generous about it. Some of the kindest notes we ever received came from that stretch, including from animators overseas who would never have made it to Chico in person. What I didn't expect was the part that came after. People stopped going out to events, and they stayed home for years. Attendance for small local shows never bounced back the way we assumed it would, so we stayed remote longer than we ever intended.

The takeaway I carry from both: no matter how carefully you plan or how well you execute, fate can always intervene.

Ending it on purpose

By the ninth year, Josh and I were both busy in ways we had never anticipated.

We had a choice that a lot of festivals face and not many handle well. We could keep it running at reduced effort and let it slowly get worse, or we could end it while it was still something we were really proud of. We chose the second option. The ninth festival was the last one, and it ended properly.

Thinking about starting a film festival?

I would encourage you to do it. I would also want you to know what you are signing up for.

Organizing is a year-round job. Vetting takes real time. Marketing never stops, because every year you are introducing the festival to a new set of people who have never heard of it. Go in with your eyes open about the hours and it is one of the most fulfilling things you can do for a creative community. Looking back, I am so happy we did it.