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Alla Gadassik: Media Scholar and Animation Curator

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“Fabric of Celluloid” at San Francisco Museum of Craft & Design

SFMCD Curatorial Director Ariel Zaccheo invited me to give a public talk in connection to the museum’s VIDEO CRAFT exhibition(Feb – Aug 2026). Five artists in this exhibition were also featured in my exhibition Interlaced: Animation & Textiles. Both exhibitions began from our shared interest in media art and textiles, and but developed in distinct directions and approaches.

My talk “Fabric of Celluloid” focused on the material history of celluloid, following the kinship between textiles and moving images from early synthetic fabrics to camerlass animation on filmstrips, hand-inked cel animation, and contemporary artists who quilt and weave with cellulose acetate and polyester.

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Public Event: “Wendy Tilby / Amanda Forbis” at Cinematheque

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a day with animation duo Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, three-time Oscar nominees, whose film When the Day Breaks (1999) has been so formative for animators and animation scholars worldwide. Tilby and Forbis were guests of honour at the Cinematheque Vancouver, and I was invited to moderate a conversation with the two artists following their presentation and film screening.

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“Signed in Ink” Screening and Talk at Kaboom 2026

Signed in Ink is a special programme I curated for the 2026 Kaboom Animation Festival in Amsterdam, in response to the festival’s theme of Human Touch. The programme presented eleven animated films that use ink to set words into motion. My introduction discussed ink’s ability to cross borders, slip beyond language, and remind us of the pleasures of writing.

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Public Talk: “Adventures of Prince Achmed” (1926)

Lotte Reiniger’s Adventures of Prince Achmed turns one hundred this year, and I was grateful to introduce this astonishing film at a special screening at VIFF (03-01-26). Musicians Gordon Grdina and Hamin Honari provided live musical accompaniment to a packed theatre. Honari, an Iranian percussionist now based in Montreal, spoke with feeling about the role of art in sustaining a common human spirit and imagination against the violence of war.

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Conference Paper: “Inuit Storytelling in Contemporary Animation”

I presented this research-in-progress at the annual conference of the Film and Media Studies Association of Canada (FMSAC) at Queen’s University (May 28, 2025). My presentation discussed the adaptation of Inuit stories for contemporary animation, identifying the opportunities and challenges of interpreting oral storytelling through this media form.

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Book Publication – “Interlaced: Animation & Textiles”

Celebrating the global launch of Interlaced: Animation and Textiles (2025), a lavishly illustrated print catalogue that documents and critically expands on the popular exhibition at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre. This book explores the relationship between animation and textiles across over a century of media art, from early cinema experiments to contemporary algorithmically generated images. Curator Alla Gadassik’s deeply researched text is accompanied by captivating exhibition photographs, high-quality reproductions of all artworks and additional archival materials, and a Director’s foreword.

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International Thesis Review: Tokyo University of the Arts

It was an honour and delight to receive an invitation from the famed GEIDAI animation program at Tokyo University of the Arts, to serve as an international reviewer for their Masters thesis projects. This animation school is bursting with creative energy, storytelling sincerity, and — under the leadership of the brilliant Koji Yamamura — fully committed to artisanal animation.

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Animate Materials Workshop receives major research grant!

Sharing overdue news that I was awarded a major SSHRC Insight Grant (2024- 2029) to support the Animate Materials Workshop for the next 5 years. This funding will allow me to continue partnerships with brilliant artists, scholars, film festivals and art galleries interested in exploring material history and culture through animation. Emily Carr University published an announcement and profile of the project here. I have so many people to thank for supporting this work, when it was developed largely on my own time on top of full-time teaching. Two people I can’t thank by name are two external peer reviewers, who wrote thoughtful and generous reviews of the application. They understood the project and clearly helped the jury appreciate its potential.

Book Publication – “Graphite: Animated Traces”

My short monograph Graphite: Animated Traces (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2024) profiles the material and cultural history of graphite as a creative medium, with close attention to its important role in contemporary art and animation.⁠ The book highlights the medium’s temperament and significance by turning to the unfolding and provisional status of the drawn moving image, considering graphite as a medium of emergent thought, contemplation, tender intimacy and impermanence.⁠

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