Alla Gadassik: Media Scholar and Animation Curator

Excited to return to the 2024 Ottawa International Animation Festival with another curated programme of animated shorts, Threads and Fibres. Following last year’s enthusiastic reception of the programme dedicated to animating ink, this year’s screening turns to animating fabric. I’m eager to bring together animation artists, critics, fans, textile enthusiasts, and secret knitters! The event will be introduced with a short talk and followed by audience discussion. Grateful to festival’s artistic director Chris Robinson for supporting this project. Tickets are available here, and details on the film lineup are included in the post below.

From the soft and pliable qualities of fabric to techniques like embroidery and quilting, textiles have inspired animators for over a century. Working with materials like cotton, wool, and polyester, artists featured in this special screening embrace textiles as a layered and tactile medium. Their films use fabric to fashion textured worlds, animate compositions inspired by textile patterns, and explore the cultural politics of clothing.

Some photographs from the event: