Share on Facebook
Share on X
Share by Email
Share on Google Classroom
David Fine and Alison Snowden
Alison Snowden, animator, writer, voice actor, producer (b at Nottingham, UK 4 Apr 1958); David Fine, animator, writer, producer (b at Toronto 13 Sept 1960).
In England Alison Snowden studied at the Mansfield Art College, Lanchester Polytechnic and the National Film and Television School, where she met a fellow student who would become her husband, the Canadian animator David Fine.
David Fine grew up in the North York suburb of Toronto. His high school friend was the documentary filmmaker Ron Mann, and they made films together as teenagers. Fine and Mann's first film, the animated The Only Game in Town (1982), was nominated for a Genie. While at the National Film and Television School, Fine worked with Alison Snowden on her student film, Second Class Mail (1984), about mail-order love. It won a number of international awards, including best first film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and was nominated for an Oscar for best animated short.
Fine and Snowden moved to Canada in the mid 1980s and went to work for the NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA. There they made George and Rosemary (1987), a short about elderly romance. The film received an Oscar nomination in addition to a GENIE AWARD for best short, first prize at the Zagreb Animation Festival, and the Montréal World Film Festival Jury Prize for short film. George and Rosemary was followed by In and Out (1989), which won the UNICEF Award at the Berlin Film Festival and was also nominated for a Genie. Their next film together, Bob's Birthday (1993), about a middle-aged dentist who is reeling from turning 40 and searching for meaning in his life, won the Oscar for best animated short in 1995 and was the pilot for the animated television series Bob and Margaret (1998-2001). Snowdon voiced Margaret and wrote several episodes along with Fine.
The couple produced the short-lived animated series Ricky Sprocket, Showbiz Boy (2007-08). They lived in London from 1989 to 2004 and then moved to Vancouver.
