CROATIAN WEBSITE FINALIST IN SXSW INTERACTIVE FESTIVAL IN AUSTIN, TX

Croatian Embassy Press Release  07/03

Washington D.C., Austin, TX – The website, Croatian Tales of Long Ago, is a finalist in SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. The website is produced by ALT F4 - Bulaja publishing company from Zagreb, Croatia. The book of Croatian fairytales, that the website is based on, were written by Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic, a famous Croatian children’s writer. Mazuranic’s first collection of stories was published in 1916. ALT F4 - Bulaja, created this international multimedia project, which is among five finalists, including the website for Lego, competing in the animation category. 
International multimedia project/CD-ROM, Croatian Tales of Long Ago, consists of eight interactive animated stories, games and movies. The project gathered seven teams of animators, illustrators, musicians, actors, translators and programmers from the USA, Canada, Scotland, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Russia, France, and Croatia. Each team took one of the stories and developed it into the digital world.
In the past, the project won several important awards, two of which were awards in the same category entitled, “Story”, at the San Francisco Festival, “FlashForward2002” and at the “NetFestival” in Rio de Janerio.
ALT F4 - Bulaja Publishing Company, founded in 1998, specializes in electronic publication. Along with recent success, they had already published three CD-ROMs with texts of Croatian classical novels. The 10th annual festival, SXSW Interactive, will be held at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX from March 7, until March 11, 2003. The awards ceremony is scheduled for March 9. 
Some parts of the story and additional information about the project can be found atwww.bulaja.com/bajke/ , or www.bulaja.com/fairytales/. 
####

For further information, please contact:
Alan Vojvodic, Embassy of the Republic of Croatia to the United States of America
(202) 986 9476, press@croatiaemb.org