Venice Film Festival honours "Toy Story" director

Sep 6, 2009, 16:27 GMT

Venice, Italy - US animator John Lasseter, director of family-viewing box-office hits such as Toy Story and A Bug's Life, picked up Sunday the first major award at this year's Venice Film Festival - a Career Golden Lion.

The 52-year-old Lasseter shared the award with the Walt Disney Company-owned Pixar Animation Studios - the producers of Toy Story as well as other well-received animated films, including Finding Nemo (2003) and Ratatouille (2007).

Legendary Star Wars and Indiana Jones series creator, George Lucas, praised Lasseter and Pixar Studios at the afternoon award ceremony in the Italian lagoon city.

'Walt (Disney) would have been proud of these guys who are carrying on the banner,' Lucas said.

Pixar is 'a company founded on talent, primarily the talent of John Lasseter,' Lucas said, adding that it 'began doing digital animation, something no one had done before.'

Four of Lasseter's closest collaborators from Disney-Pixar, the directors Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, also attended the ceremony where they picked up smaller, replica versions of the Golden Lion statue awarded to Lasseter.

Describing them as his 'brothers in creativity,' Lasseter said they all shared a dream: 'entertain our audiences around the world.'

The world's oldest cinema competition - this year marks its 66th edition - the Venice Film Festival has traditionally favoured so- called art-house films, but in recent years more commercial films have also picked up awards.

This year's festival runs from September 2 to 12, when most of the top awards will be announced.