William Norman McLaren, LL. D. was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.
Priit Pärn is an Estonian cartoonist and animation director whose films have enjoyed success among critics as well as the public at various film festivals.
Fantasia International Film Festival is a genre film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. It focuses on niche, low budget movies in various genres, from horror to sci-fi. Regularly held in July/August, by 2016 its annual audience had already surpassed 100,000 viewers and outgrown even the Montreal World Film Festival.
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre, born in Murdochville in 1978, is a Quebec director and producer of animated films. She is an associate professor at Université Laval, a theorist, and an author on women's animation cinema.
Chris Shepherd is a double BAFTA nominated British television/film writer, graphic novelist and director. Born in Anfield, Liverpool in 1967, he is known for combining live action with animation. His work fuses comedy with commentary on the darker side of human nature.
The People's Republic of Animation (PRA) is an animation studio based in Adelaide, Australia. It began as a creator of music videos for Australian bands in 2003, and has since created award-winning short films and TV commercials, and developed feature films.
McLaren's Negatives is a 2006 short animated documentary directed by French Canadian filmmaker Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre. The film is a study of the Canadian animator Norman McLaren, and his personal view of film making. The short film won several awards, including the 2007 Jutra Award for best animated short film.
Silence Is Golden is a 15-minute award-winning film written and directed by Chris Shepherd and produced by Maria Manton. Set in 1970s Britain, it tells the story of a 10-year-old boy's obsession with his seemingly simple-minded neighbour Dennis. The film mixes live action with various form of animation, including stop frame, drawn 2D. The complex mixture of styles enables Shepherd to show Billy's fantasies and inner thoughts on screen.
Patrick Smith is an American animator and YouTuber. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). His formative years were spent as a storyboard artist for Walt Disney, and animation director for MTV's Daria and the Emmy-nominated Downtown. Smith spent five years in Singapore as a professor at the graduate film program for New York University Tisch School of the Arts, under artistic director/filmmaker Oliver Stone. His 2019 film "Pour 585" is one of the 5 most viewed Animated Shorts on Youtube, and Smith is one of the few YouTubers that retains a consistent film festival release schedule, his films have screened at Tribeca Film Festival, Slamdance, Ottawa, and Annecy, and hundreds of other festivals world-wide. His most recent stop motion short "Beyond Noh" is currently part of the acclaimed traveling showcase "The Animation Show of Shows." Patrick is a fellow of the New York Foundation of the Arts and a curator for multiple international film and animation festivals. The beginning of his animation career has been told by himself like this:
In 1994, I was in college, and one night decided to animate something strange. I didn't know how to draw, let alone animate, so I just did something abstract. A friend of mine told me I should put an logo on it and send it to MTV. So I mailed a VHS of it to "MTV Networks" the address I got from the phone book. About two weeks later I got a call from a guy named Abbey, who said that they wanted to buy it. I remember the day he called, because it was the same day that I got my rejection letter from Cal Arts. I re-animated the same thing, a bit tighter. The spot won a BDA award and a Jury Prize at the 1995 Holland Animation Festival. After I finished the ID, MTV offered me a job on Beavis and Butthead, which was my first ever studio job, and which brought me to New York City.
City of Gold is a 1957 Canadian documentary film by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig, chronicling Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush. It made innovative use of archival photos and camera movements to animate still images, while also combining narration and music to bring drama to the whole. Its innovative use of still photography in this manner has been cited by Ken Burns as the source of inspiration for his so-called Ken Burns effect, a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production to animate still images.
Quest is a 1996 German animated short film directed by Tyron Montgomery, written (story) and produced by Thomas Stellmach at the University of Kassel - Art College. After four years of production it won several awards including the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Dog is a stop motion animated short film written, directed and animated by Suzie Templeton. The film was made at the Royal College of Art in 2001.
Peter Raymont is a Canadian filmmaker and producer and the president of White Pine Pictures, an independent film, television and new media production company based in Toronto. Among his films are Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005), A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (2007), The World Stopped Watching (2003) and The World Is Watching (1988). The 2011 feature documentary West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson and 2009's Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould were co-directed with Michèle Hozer.
Semiconductor is UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. They have been working together for over twenty years producing visually and intellectually engaging moving image works which explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, questioning how these devices mediate our experiences. Their unique approach has won them many awards, commissions and prestigious fellowships including; SónarPLANTA 2016 commission, Collide @ CERN Ars Electronica Award 2015, Jerwood Open Forest 2015 and Samsung Art + Prize 2012. Exhibitions and screenings include; The Universe and Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2016; Infosphere, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2016; Quantum of Disorder, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, 2015; Da Vinci: Shaping the Future, ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014; Let There Be Light, House of Electronic Arts, Basel 2013 ; Field Conditions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2012; International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2012; New York Film Festival: Views from the Avant Garde, 2012; European Media Art Festival, 2012; Worlds in the Making, FACT, Liverpool 2011 ; Earth; Art of a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009 and Sundance Film Festival, 2009.
FLIP is an animation festival primarily hosted by the Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton, UK. It is one of two festivals hosted by Light House, the other of which is Deaffest. Official literature for the festival says that FLIP occurs annually at the beginning of November and attracts submissions from more than 30 countries worldwide. As well as screening the selected open submissions, FLIP also consists of special screenings, talks from professionals within the animation world, workshops, industry panels, portfolio reviews and competitions. The festival was set up, managed and programmed by Peter McLuskie between 2004 and 2011. It grew out of the 'Animation Forum', also based at Light House and which was later rebranded as Animation Forum West Midlands and found a home at Birmingham City University. In 2009, the festival was awarded a Black Country Tourism Award for Event of the Year.
Marjut Rimminen is a Finnish-born animator and film director living and working in London.
The Cow is a 1989 Soviet animated short film directed by Aleksandr Petrov.
Panic Attack! is a hand-drawn, hand-painted animated short by Eileen O'Meara. It was jury-selected for Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs ShortFest, Florida Film Festival, Anim'est and Raindance Film Festival.
Johnno's Dead is an 8-minute film written and directed by Chris Shepherd and produced by Nicolas Schmerkin with UK producer Abigail Addison. First transmitted on the Arte France and Germany and premiered in the UK on 2 December 2016 at the London International Animation Festival. The film stars previous Shepherd collaborators Ian Hart and Chris Freeney.
Will Anderson is a Scottish-born film animator, living and working in Edinburgh, best known for his award-winning short animation The Making of Longbird.