The Animation Council of the Philippines, Inc. (ACPI) is calling all budding and professional animators from across the country to participate and submit their animated works to Animahenasyon 2009: 3rd Pinoy Animation Festival, as it formally opens and accepts entries to this year’s festival. Entry forms may be downloaded from the ACPI web site at . The deadline for submission of entries is on September 15. Animahenasyon 2009 will be held from November 25 to 28 at the Gateway Mall Araneta Center.

In an effort to build an audience, awareness and development of original contents, ACPI puts together its flagship project through an annual animation festival called Animahenasyon that showcases original animated works of both aspiring and professional animators in the country through a competition.

The festival is composed of the professional and the student/amateur divisions that will have different running time categories: 1 to 5 minutes; 6 to 20 minutes, 21 to 60 minutes, and the full-animated feature (more than 60 minutes). There are also categories for music video, title sequence, public information, demo reel, and TV series. There will also be animated works in exhibition (full-length, special citation, and past Animahenasyon winners).

Last year’s grand prize winner of Animahenasyon was Love and Marriage, a jab at the folly of racial prejudice in marriage, as seen through the eyes of its Chinese-Filipino filmmaker Kenny Lynn Tai. Love and Marriage is a narrative musical cartoon that relates the story of Chinese-Filipino interracial marriage, and a comic take on this long-standing issue in the Chinese society captured in 7.5 minutes. Tai graduated from De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde with a degree in Multimedia Arts, and is now a freelance animator.