2025 : Jean-Baptiste Garnero

The Giannalberto Bendazzi Award Committee, made up of the 4 members of the PIAFF team and the first three winners of the award – Marco de Blois, Nancy Denney-Phelps and Mohammed Beyoud, has decided to award this year’s prize to a French personality with a wide range of skills: archivist, programmer, historian… but also a passionate passer-by whose contribution to the promotion and knowledge of French animation is invaluable.

Throughout his career, Jean-Baptiste Garnero has used the resources of the CNC, for which he is in charge of studies, to unveil little-known aspects of animation. Never neglecting any aspect of the history of French animation, from animated advertising in France to the authors great classics, through exhibitions, programs and publications.

For example, during the Annecy Festival’s focus on France in 2016, he introduced us to such little-known films as Paul de Roubaix’s Allegro ma Troppo and Albert Pierru’s Surprise Boogie. More recently, he has highlighted filmmaker like Peter Földes, computer animation pioneers such as André Martin and Jerzy Kular, and the Frenkel brothers.

Jean-Baptiste Garnero is also, in his own way, an activist, and it’s in this light that we should appreciate his efforts, in duo with his colleague Sophie Le Tétour, to restore L’Épinette, the pinscreen created by Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker, which has revived the production in France of films made with this unique technique. The exhibition devoted to the pinscreen, which he co-curated with Sophie Le Tétour at the Musée Château-d’Annecy in 2015, was absolutely remarkable in this respect.

What’s more, Jean-Baptiste Garnero is a tireless communicator who, with the same zest, eloquence and generosity, is able to address all audiences, whether high-level academics or young audiences.

Giannalberto Bendazzi, from whom this Prize is named, has written a lively and authoritative history of animation. Jean-Baptiste Garnero’s work is fully in line with this approach, and its continuity.