Tournee of Animation producer Wright dies

Director advised festivals across the world

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Prescott Wright, producer of the Tournee of Animation and a founder of the Ottowa Animation Festival, died Dec. 28 in Alburquerque of Pick's Disease. He was 71.

Prescott was raised in the Bronx and moved to San Francisco in the mid 1960s, where he worked at Brandon Films and ran Filmwright, his own small film distribution company.

When several of his friends from ASIFA-Hollywood, including Bill Scott, Bill Littlejohn, Les Goldman and June Foray, decided to put together an international animation program to be shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wright booked the program into other cities as the International Tournee of Animation. He continued to organize and distribute the annual celebration until Expanded Cinema purchased rights to the program in the late 1980s.

For many years Prescott was on the International Board of Directors of ASIFA, the international animation association. He was also a founder of ASIFA-San Francisco.

Prescott also served as an advisor to major animation festivals around the world. He was a founder and the first international director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival and served a year as director of the Denver International Film Festival.

In the 1990s he worked for a year for Disney as a spotter and recruiter of animation talent. After that he worked in both the Philippines and Southern India as an instructor and festival director for emerging animation studios.

He is survived by a daughter and a brother.

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