Ferenc Cakó

He was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1950. He graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 1973, earning his degree in applied graphic design. During his college years, he won many main awards for his animated films at the National Amateur Film Festival. After graduation, he was invited to work at Pannonia Film Studio where was a production designer, director and animator from 1973 to 1991. He directed many series and nearly thirty short films using traditional 3D animation techniques such as sand, puppet, clay, object and papercut animation. He was honoured with many prizes for his achievements, including a Crystal Award in Annecy and Best Short Film award in Cannes for Ab ovo, and also a Golden Bear in Berlin for Ashes. Ad rem was awarded in San Francisco and Oberhausen, and Labyrinth won the Grand Prix at KAFF. Song of the Sand was invited to the Cannes competition, Vision and Stones to Berlin, and Letters to Venice. In 1995 he founded his own animation studio, C.A.K.O. Studio, to produce his own work and with the purpose of creating education activities. He organises exhibitions of his graphics and fine art works, and he also illustrates books. Being the first in the world, in 1996 he developed the live performance technique of sand animation: these fascinating shows of sand drawings are accompanied by music compositions performed with live orchestral music and have brought him outstanding success both in his home country and internationally. He is a Merited Artist of Hungary and a Hungarian Artist of Excellence. He is a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.