International Animation Day
Next: October 28, 2027
Pictures that move, and move you.
The story
Where it comes from
International Animation Day was created in 2002 by ASIFA, the International Animated Film Association, from an idea by its then president, Abi Feijó. The date honours 28 October 1892, when Émile Reynaud gave the first public show of his Théâtre Optique at the Musée Grévin in Paris, projecting a story told in hand-painted moving pictures to a paying audience. It came three years before the Lumière brothers' famous film screenings of December 1895, and ASIFA counts it as the birth of animation on screen.
How it's celebrated
ASIFA's national groups, in more than 50 countries on every inhabited continent, hold screenings, workshops, exhibitions and demonstrations on and around 28 October, and swap programmes of short films so that audiences see work from other countries. Schools and cinemas join in, and so do fans: it is the day to rewatch the cartoon that first made you want to draw.
Did you know
- Reynaud's Pauvre Pierrot was made of 500 hand-painted images on a band 36 metres long, which he moved by hand during each show.
- Only two of Reynaud's picture bands survive, and his show was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2015.
- The Malaysian studio Les' Copaque chose the twins Upin and Ipin for their own series because they were easy to model and animate: no hair, apart from Upin's single strand, and identical features.
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