TAIS Showcase Matinee: Local Exposure
TICKETS ON SALE OCTOBER 5th 11:00AM! HERE
The Toronto Animated Image society (TAIS) is excited to present a programme of animated short films from the TAIS community. With a focus on local animators this screening includes work produced during residencies at TAIS, submissions to the 2021 TAIS Anijam as well as a selection of new and old works from the community.
The focus of this event is to celebrate independent animation produced by local artists.
Michael Enzbrunner
DEATH VAN
6:07:00
Synopsis:
The fictitious space-rock duo DEATH VAN tours through a miniature world inhabited by surreal creatures that are haunted and terrorized by a menacing and mischievous entity.
Bio: Michael Enzbrunner is a visual artist and award winning character and VFX animator. He also creates drawings, paintings and audiovisual experiments utilizing analog and digital techniques.
Dylan Glynn
On Fire
1:22:00
Synopsis: The fires of hatred and greed which allow for the greatest atrocities of human suffering, the literal fires of a burning planet rapidly transforming as we race towards climate apocalypse and the fiery passion of movements that work to build a new world for the many and not the few.
Bio: Dylan Glynn is a Toronto-based, award-winning animator, painter, and author whose multidisciplinary practice is characterized by its emotion, grace and sense of wild-movement. His work has been recognized and exhibited by Society of Illustrators (Gold Medal SOI 62), American Illustration, Somerset House and the Canadian Screen Awards.
Mitchell Keys
Deep & Deeper Down
4:00:00
TAIS Micro-residency 2021
Benjamin Fieschi-Rose
The Lost Seahorse
10:00:00
Synopsis: A stop-motion short film about a vulnerable seahorse that is swept away from his coral reef and must survive the dangerous journey home.
Director’s Bio: Benjamin Fieschi-Rose is a director, creature designer and visual artist from Vancouver, B.C. He is a graduate of the Film Studies program at Ryerson University. His passion for the natural world finds its way into much of his creative work.
https://www.facebook.com/thelostseahorsefilm
https://www.instagram.com/thelostseahorsefilm/
celinefreud
happy people.
2:13:00
Synopsis: Welcome to the world’s most mentally unwell metropolis! “happy people.” is a response to the current cultural desert. In its depiction of an interlinked schizopolis (schizotypal-metropolis, schizophrenic-metropolis, schizo-metropolis; borrowed from Soderbergh’s 1996 experimental comedy, Schizopolis), the artist aims to satirize a contemporary, postmodern era marked by irony, commercialism, and nihilism.
Bio: celinefreud is an independent animator, painter, and illustrator straight out of Toronto, Ontario. His works are aesthetically, metaphysically, and philosophically rooted in the absurd, the traumatic; disjunctive, oddball narratives.
Kate Hawley
Stuck
4:18:00
Synopsis: Stuck is an introspective exploration game in which the player guides a small seedling through multiple mental planes, exploring their personified negative feelings in an attempt to understand themselves better. In this Animation several animated illustrations from Stuck will be shown in sequence moving and blending into each other to create an abstract blend of pixel art and gif art.
Bio: Kate Hawley is an animation student from Halifax, Nova Scotia. After relocating to Toronto, Ontario to attend OCADu’s animation program, Hawley has been featured in the 2019 video fever video art showcase and has won Jagex’s video lore competition with her animations. She loves bringing colourful and imaginative characters to life and exploring how non conventional characters move and interact with the world.
Daniel Sterlin-Altman
Do You Even Carrot All?
2:41:00
TAIS Micro-residency 2018
Synopsis: Everyone needs to reach Carrot, but he doesn’t seem to carrot all.
Bio: Daniel Sterlin-Altman is a stop-motion animation filmmaker from Toronto. A graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Daniel creates absurd animated short films exploring family, queer identity, and tragedy through humour. His films and commissioned works have screened in festivals and events internationally, including Krok International Animation Festival, Anima Brussels, Pride Montreal, Inside Out LGBT Film Fest, and Outfest LA, and have been granted audience and jury prizes. Daniel is currently producing his thesis work at the Filmuniversity Babelsberg Konrad Wolf in Potsdam, Germany.
celinefreud
NOT QUITE HELL
5:00:00
Synopsis: NOT QUITE HELL is a series of meditations on human suffering loosely based upon Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.
Bio: celinefreud is an independent animator, painter, and illustrator currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. His works deal with notions of trauma, absurdity, and aesthetics, utilizing both digital and traditional mediums to further his oddball narratives.
Patrick Dias
Missed Connections: “Was that your limb? – w4m”
1:56:00
Synopsis: With narration sourced from a real Craigslist Missed connections ad, and visually wrapped with a fictional narrative—this is a story of a space captain late for his own launch, and the woman who was at the right place but at the wrong time.
Bio: Pat is an Indian / Filipino, Toronto based designer and animator—a graduate in graphic design and self taught in illustration and animation. What fuels him is doing passion projects that inch him closer towards his goal of being repped as a director, and finding his stylistic voice. He spends his extracurricular time honing his slingshot skills, doing archery, and attempting to pet various outdoor cats.
Emily Pelstring
Petal to the Metal
3:00:00
Synopsis: This hand-processed 16mm film reflects on botanical animism. It is a song written for night-crawlers, compost, and shadows, inspired by human flower-lust. Water, fire, earth and air are interwoven with the garden’s creature crew. The work draws a parallel between the photographic alchemy of cinematic experiments and the photosynthetic processes of plants.
Bio: Emily Pelstring is an artist and filmmaker whose work incorporates animation techniques and optical illusions. She teaches in the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University in Canada.
Mahnaz Nezarati
Harf Noush
0:39:00
Synopsis: Focusing on female identity, حرف نوش Harf Noush is a short experimental mixed media animation using traditional paint on glass technique and frame by frame animation in Photoshop exploring the complex relationships between women through a common and seemingly mundane ritual of having tea. This animation continues a larger body of work from Women’s series, in which I have been mainly zooming in on female interactions and revealing the impact of different factors on the relationships amongst and between Iranian women.حرف نوش Harf Noush utilizes elements associated with femininity, particularly teacups, textile patterns and female figures in a dreamy-like space by employing representational and abstract painting techniques throughout this short animation
Bio: “حرف نوش”Harf Noush is a combination of a noun, حرفHarf (word, speech), and an infinitive verb نوشNoush (to drink). Through conversations, which can have a positive or negative impact on us, we unconsciously absorb the words much in the same way as we drink the tea, and through this simple ritual we take each word to our hearts.
Lina Wu
Rain to Eaves
2:50:00
TAIS Micro-residency 2021
Synopsis: Unravelling the intimate & amorphous dynamic that winds between two bodies.
Bio: Lina Wu (BDes OCAD U) is a multi-disciplinary artist and illustrator based in Tkaronto (Toronto). Her work explores self-perception, mythology, femininity, and adolescence through a diverse range of media. Her art has shown in galleries such as Xpace Cultural Centre and Gallery 44; she has facilitated workshops with organizations including Tea Base, Insomniac Film Festival, and Canada Comics Open Library. Lina is interested in fusing highbrow with lowbrow, and softness with strength.
Jesi Jordan
Justice
2:13:00
Synopsis: This animation is about the symbiotic relationship humans have with earth and about a mother’s journey to seek justice for her child. The big foot tramples on a baby flower before it has the chance to flourish. Her mother journeys through the roots of the earth and sprouts into various forms of life as the tries to cling onto the memory of her child one last time. Together, the plants expel a seed from the bosom of a rose and plant the seed of Justice into the earth. Animation is created with charcoal on paper by Jesi Jordan. ‘Justice’ musical track is written and sung by Jennifer Castle off of her album ‘Monarch Season’.
Bio: Jesi Jordan is a self taught traditional animator from Ontario, Canada. She has been creating animated diaries for the past 15 years.
Una Di Gallo
BOY
2:45:00
TAIS Micro-residency 2019
Synopsis: BOY is an experimental cowboy western. Created using traditional printing methods, it tells two parallel stories — one of a duel between two cowboys at high noon, the other a rancher’s pursuit of an otherworldly bull. It was produced in part at the Toronto Animated Image Society.
Bio: Una Di Gallo(b.1995) is an animator, illustrator, and zine publisher from Hamilton, Ontario. A graduate of Sheridan College’s animation program, her films have been screened internationally at festivals including TIFF, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, TAIS Showcase, Le Sommets Du Cinema D’Animation, and The Animattikon Project. She has received honours from OIAF for her independent film 1992, and the award for Best Student Short at the TIFF Top Ten for stop-motion film Quarters, which she co-directed with 8 other artists. Her passion lies in experimenting with media, shape, movement and colour to recreate stark moods and atmospheres in her narratives. As a filmmaker, she enjoys exploring emotions that she finds mysterious, elusive, or otherwise difficult to put into words.
Isaac King
WhateverTree
11:11:00
Synopsis: A dead tree goes viral, attracting wildlife, a nature lover, and a crowd of online followers. Animated entirely outside, “WhateverTree” examines our connection to nature in the age of social media, screens, and selfies.
Bio: Isaac King is an award-winning animation filmmaker and artist from Canada. As a director of short films and commercials, his work spans a wide range of media including drawing, stop-motion, cutout and pixillation. His latest work experiments with outdoor animation and time-lapse photography. Using handcrafted and digital techniques, he focusses on environmental and social issues with humour and warmth. His films have screened worldwide, winning numerous awards including the Annecy Audience Prize.
TAIS 2021 Showcase is presented with the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
