Talk:The Overcoat (animated film)
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[edit] Unofficial news on the current status of The Overcoat
This can't be put into the article because I haven't been able to find a secondary source which would confirm it. However, I had the chance to speak to two people at the Ottawa International Animation Festival this year who told me some very interesting things.
The first was Kihachiro Kawamoto, who was there for the Canadian premiere of his film The Book of the Dead. Kawamoto has worked with Norshteyn a few times in the past few years and seems to be very respectfull of him - he was the supervisor of Winter Days (2003), and he also invited Norshteyn to animate a scene in his latest film as a "guest animator". He told me (largely through a translator, as English is a bit difficult for him) that Toshio Suzuki, the president and chief producer of Studio Ghibli, is currently funding Norshteyn's work. The catch, he said, was that in order to get the funding, Norshteyn had to give Suzuki a concrete date for when he would finish the film, and apparently he told him that he would have it done by the end of 2007. Kawamoto thinks that it's not very likely that he'll actually finish the film - indeed Norshteyn has always put his artwork ahead of any deadlines...
The other person was Russian animator Konstantin Bronzit, who was present for a retrospective of his work at the festival (his short films are hilarious, by the way). He told me that he personally knows Norshteyn - indeed, it seems that most animators in Russia know each other - and believes that nearly an hour of The Overcoat is done right now and that it will be released relatively soon. Somehow, I don't think that the "one hour" figure is likely, given that that's how long the whole film is supposed to be. Nevertheless, his optimism was good news to me.
If anyone can find an article that mentions that Suzuki is funding The Overcoat, please add it to this page! -Esn 06:04, 14 October 2006 (UTC)