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.
Continue reading ““Threads and Fibres” Screening and Talk at OIAF 2024″
[Update: the position has been filled] Animate Materials Workshop is hiring a research assistant for a project on Indigenous storytelling for animation. Supported by interviews with contemporary animation producers, this project explores the possibilities and barriers of adapting oral stories for animation, with a focus on contemporary Inuit animation.
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This public talk (19-May-2024) introduces Maya Deren’s film Meshes of the Afternoon and Věra Chytilová’s film Daisies at VIFF, as a continuation of their popular Pantheon series dedicated to the Sight & Sound list of “greatest films of all time.” What do these two films have in common, other than being directed by women? I look forward to offering some framing remarks and hearing from audience members during the post-screening discussion. Screening time and tickets are available here.
My short article on the visual history of the floating horizon, from early depictions of aerial vision to the wonderful short film “The Case of the Spiral Staircase” (1982), was just published here in the online journal Animation 2.0. Happy to direct more attention to the Dutch filmmaking duo Jacques Verbeek and Karin Wiertz, many of whose films are accessible online courtesy of the EYE Filmmuseum.
How can researchers and artists develop meaningful ethical practices around storytelling methods? What responsibilities do researchers and creative practitioners have to participant stories they gather, store, and share? This virtual roundtable, presented by ECU’s Research Ethics Board, features speakers Aaron Nelson-Moody (Coast Salish art and design), Candace Brunette-Debassige (Indigenous education and academic policy), and Ranjan Datta (community-based disaster research). It was an honour to organize and facilitate this virtual roundtable as part of my work with the ECU Research Ethics Board.
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This public talk (December-21-2023) opens the VIFF’s December 2023 series The Wonders, following a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, Walt Disney Studio). The talk discusses the pivotal role that Snow White played in the history of the Disney studio and theatrical feature-length animation more broadly. Just as the film’s titular dwarfs descended into the mines to source lustrous diamonds, hundreds of workers entered Walt Disney’s animation studio between 1934 and 1937 to produce and polish a new vision of spectacular, expensive animation.
Looking forward to presenting a new curated programme of animated shorts at the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) 2023 and serving as a member of the international jury! The programme will be dedicated to animating ink, and will be accompanied by an audience introduction and a printed curatorial essay.
This public talk (August-18-2023) is featured in VIFF Centre’s summer 2023 series Back to the 80s.
After decades of postwar decline, the early 1980s seemed to spell the end of feature-length animation in the United States, and Walt Disney Studios considered shuttering its animation division. Yet by the end of the decade, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released to immense box office success and wide critical acclaim, marking the beginning of an American animation renaissance. Why did a studio synonymous with wholesome family entertainment take a risk on a technically daring film crammed with slapstick comedy and sexual innuendo? Following the film’s detective protagonist, this public talk investigates the mystery of how Hollywood animation went from the brink of collapse to one of the world’s top theatrical attractions. Toontown will never be the same!
Alla Gadassik: Media Scholar and Animation Curator 