14th Annual TAIS Animation Showcase
July 10-16th ONLINE
FREE EVENT – $10 Donations suggested in lieu of purchase price to https://BlackLivesMatter.ca/donate
Bringing audiences the best in independent Canadian and International animated short films, and the results of the 2020 Anijam competition.
During the week of July 10th-16th, the Toronto Animated Image Society (TAIS) is thrilled to present a summer night of animations: a programme of short animated films, the results of the 2020 Selected Anijam films competition, and a new commissioned work titled “Steamed” by Eric Belanger – the 2019 Anijam competition winner.
2020 Programme listed below – Check out the 2020 Showcase Trailer!
This year TAIS is offering our 14th Annual Animation Showcase programme for free. We understand that many artists are experiencing financial difficulties during the pandemic and we are making adjustments accordingly to maintain our mission of supporting independent artists as best as we can within our own financial reality.
We are asking, if financially possible, that you redirect what would have been the entrance cost to Showcase ($10 CAD) to Black Lives Matter Canada: https://blacklivesmatter.ca/donate/
Advance tickets are available through Eventbrite HERE
TAIS presents the 14th Annual TAIS Animation Showcase- Online Edition. Our showcase offers a snapshot of contemporary animation today, with artists exploring a diverse range of possibilities in the animated image.
The program features 16 short animated films from 10 different countries: Canada, USA, UK, Austria, Norway, Japan, Denmark, Ireland, Taiwan, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This programme is for mature audiences only.
AWARDS and the 2020 ANIJAM
Awards will be given – as selected by a jury of animation artists and curator: Thịnh Nguyễn, Nienke Deutz and Geneviève Wallen.
The jury will award a ‘Grand Prize – Best of the Showcase’ award, and a ‘Jury’s Best Anijam’ award. Full bios for the 2020 Jury are available HERE.
Also featured is TAIS’ NIGHT VISIONS Anjiam competition. These ghostly 10 seconds animations feature all sorts of things that go bump in the night. The Showcase Jury’s pick for Best Anijam will be awarded a cash prize and in-kind studio use (or equipment if we are still in the midst of pandemic) toward the production of a short animated project for presentation at TAIS Showcase in 2021.
Anijam 2020 details available HERE.
2020 Animation Showcase Programme
(presented below in programme order by title)
Big Toast
Sacha Beeley, UK
0:04:21
Sexy, sexy food. Sleazy and vain Toast tries to win back an ex flame, the beautiful Egg, but the hideous Big Toast is now on the scene. It is time. 🙂
A 2018 graduate from MA Character Animation at Central Saint Martins in London, SACHA BEELEY is now an award-winning animator and director. Using 2D hand-drawn animation with contrasting colour schemes, minimal backgrounds and surreal characters she creates pleasing, eclectic and humorous designs. She has animated and directed clips on several commercial campaigns for clients such as Mailchimp, Vow for Girls, Netil Radio and Bloomberg Businessweek. Her short films have been selected at many international film festivals including Animac Festival, Berlin Motion Picture Festival and her graduation film won Best Animated Film at Dublin International Film Festival. The most recent short ‘Big Toast’ gained recognition from the wider artistic community for its hilarity and unique illustrative style.
powerwash (i love you)
Rory Waudby-Tolley, UK
0:02:30
A short film about love and patios.
Rory Waudby-Tolley is an animator and film-maker from London whose films have played at many festivals around the world. His RCA graduation film Mr Madila has won prizes at Palm Springs, Fantoche, Flickerfest, Premier Plans Angers and the RTS Award for Best Post Grad Animation. In 2017 he completed an arts residency at Pinsent Masons law firm where he created an animated documentary Art For Lawyers. In 2018 he produced two Mr Madila shorts for Adult Swim, and made an environmental animated documentary about a lake in East Texas – There’s Something in the Water. His latest short New Year, a sci-fi comedy co-directed by Diana Gradinaru, was funded by BFI Network and is currently on the festival circuit. Rory is a tutor at the Royal College of Art and a visiting lecturer at UAL.
Fan (Fan) Fiction
Lynn Dana Wilton, Canada
0:00:58
*TAIS Member
More fans, more fiction, more death! An in-camera, multi-plane animated short featuring silhouette paper puppets, bits of lighting gels, and sand expands on a TAIS Anijam project to celebrate mashups.
Lynn Dana Wilton’s (Sheridan, Classical Animation -2001; Ryerson, BAAID – 1991) commercial work includes directing & animating stop-motion for TV series, specials, docs, ads, and interstitials including “Sesame Street”, “A Shamen’s Apprentice”, “Book of Dog”, “Biidaaban”, “Scout & the Gumboot Kids”, “Four Faces of the Moon”, “What’s Inside?”, “Glenn Martin, DDS”, “Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple In All the World”, “A Miser Brothers’ Christmas”, “Lunar Jim”, and “Henry’s World”. Indie shorts including “(Re)Cycle” and “Celestial Red & Blue” have screened around the world and she conducts workshops & lectures at home and abroad. She’s also very proud of her former involvement in Scratch Track, a cameraless film project performed live with hand-drawn sound (yes, drawn sound!) at the 2002 OIAF.
Garnet Graves
Flavourcel Collective, Canada
0:03:44
The twisting, neon discomfort of body parts pulsates and trembles from the depths of the deepest ocean up to the cold and unforgiving vastness of space. Bones and tendons with their own agenda dislocate from Devours’ earthly queer vessel.
Flavourcel is an animation collective based in the Unceded Coast Salish territories. We work collaboratively to make short-form experimental animations that play with the contemporary narrative of what animation is and could be.
Oh Say Can You See?
Noam Sussman, Canada
0:01:58
*TAIS Member
A socio-political analysis of the United States of America’s current state of affairs.
Noam Sussman is an animation director, illustrator and filmmaker from Toronto, Canada.
Now 2
Kevin Eskew, US
0:09:2
“The well-springs were deeper and less detectable, deeper and shallower both, look at billboards and matchbooks, trademarks on products, birthmarks on bodies, look at the behavior of your pets.” Don Delillo, Underworld
Kevin Eskew is an animator based in Los Angeles. He received his MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts. His short films have screened internationally at festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival, Slamdance, Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, and the New Chitose International Animation Festival.
Steamed
Eric Belanger, Canada
*TAIS Member, 2019 Anijam Competition Winner
A spouted hero suffers misfortune after misfortune, each event increasing the emotional pressure within him.
Eric Belanger is an illustrator and animator with a passion for subject matter that considers the mundane in a more fantastic light. Eric’s work infuses elements of humour, horror, and ambiguity to create work that is as visually provocative as it is conceptual.
Pulsator
Thor Sivertsen, Norway
0:05:15
Abstract animation using stop-motion and digital techniques.
Born 1950. Animator and director since 1980. Made 7 own short films and contributed on several other shorts and features.
MIMI
Lisa Fukaya, Tokyo, Denmark
0:04:17
MIMI has a pimple for the first time. She is afraid of being different from other girls and is uncomfortable around those who are different from herself. Because of this, she begins to mimic other girls around her.
Lisa Fukaya is an Animation Artist based in Tokyo.
Graduated from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo, where she studied Stage and Performance design.
She has previously worked at a music video studio as Assistant Director. She has also been freelancing as a graphics designer.
The Lighthouse Man
Matthew Walton, Canada
0:04:48
A friendly giant struggles to adapt to the growth of an out-port community he calls home.
Matt Walton is a 24 year-old, new grad of Sheridan’s Animation program. He made his first film, The Fox and the Pigeon with his teammates in 2019 which went on to win the Annie for Best Student Film. The Lighthouse Man (his independent capstone project) is inspired by the rugged coast line of the place he did most of his growing up, Newfoundland.
Tuna
Cliona Noonan, Ireland
0:06:00
A late-night supermarket cashier with a strange obsession is visited by a mysterious customer
Cliona Noonan is an Irish animation filmmaker. She graduated in 2019 with a BA in Animation from the National Film School at IADT Dun Laoghaire.
Lizard Ladder
Ted Wiggin, USA
0:05:20
Animals encounter a ball that gives magical powers and sows conflict between them.
Ted makes short films and software for animation. He strives to create new techniques through custom software and to explore their expressive and narrative potential.
Scenes From the Grocery
Arielle McCuaig, Canada
0:03:05
Three sisters are hungry so they go to the grocery store and have strange visions of food. Forgotten meals and consumer products mingle and meld with dancing fruit and frugal customers. Endless aisles of shopping carts, utensils, sale prices, and meats. Everything dancing rhythmically to the echoes of “Hungry!”, as coupon cutters search for deals.
Arielle McCuaig is an artist and musician from Calgary, AB. As a member of the Quickdraw Animation Society, she has been a recipient of the Chris J. Melnychuk Production Scholarship and won the David Ratzlaff Award for Best Experimental Animation two years in a row at the annual Animation Lockdown. She runs local record label Pee Blood and writes and records as Janitor Scum.
isle of Chair
Ivyy Chen, Taiwan & UK
0:06:00
On a secluded Island, a chair has fallen down.
Originally from Tainan, Taiwan, Ivyy Chen is an Animation Director and Illustrator, currently living in London where she graduated with a degree of BA in Illustration Animation at Kingston University. Prior to this, she graduated with a degree of BFA in Multimedia and Animation Art at National Taiwan University of Arts.
Eaten
Mohsen Rezapour, Islamic Republic of Iran
0:07:20
In a mysterious unknown planet, a rabbit-like creature is eaten; but that’s not the end of the story.
B.A. in Graphic Design, born in 1985 Tehran, Iran. Writer, director and producer of a few short animations, web series and video arts.
In Her Boots
Kathrin Steinbacher, Austria
0:06:03
Hedi is experiencing strange things. While her granddaughter is visiting, she suddenly embarks on a hiking journey, to the deepest parts of the Alps, revealing the reason for her devoted attachment to her hiking shoes. A story about Heidi’s attempt to retain her identity and autonomy.
Kathrin Steinbacher (born in Schwarzach i. P.) is an Austrian animation director and Illustrator who finds depth in the vast variety of people, opinions and cultures by using narrative and documentary aspects as an essential component throughout her work, exploring it through different forms and mediums. During her years of experimentation her preferred way of telling stories has fallen on animation and narrative illustration. Motivated by discussing difficult topics and raising awareness, she often uses observation to draw, and later bring it to life, by having a strong focus on design and characters. Her narratives are often inspired by personal experiences. Kathrin graduated with first class honours in Illustration Animation (BA) at Kingston University in London in 2017 and in Animation (MA) at the Royal College of Art in 2019. Her films “The Woman Who Turns Into A Castle “Freedom” have been screened at International Festival around the world.
2020 Animation Showcase Poster
We are so excited that Jillian Tamaki created our 14th Annual TAIS Animation Showcase poster!
Jillian is an award winning accomplished artist. For more on Jillian’s work, click here
TAIS 2020 Showcase is presented with the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
