Date: November 11th 2023
Doors: 6:30pm Screening: 7:00pm
The Revue Cinema
400 Roncesvalles Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
M6R 2M9
The TAIS Animation Showcase presents a collection of independent animation shorts from Canada and around the world, featuring 17 diverse animated films that offer a glimpse into the contemporary animation landscape.
Join us for the 17th Annual TAIS Showcase gala screening!
Content Advisories: Please note that some of these films may contain mature themes, scenes of violence and strobing. Expanded Content Advisories are listed under the films.
Caw! Woof! Splash!
Lamprini Loukaidi
United Kingdom
Existential comedy about a neighbourhood in captivity.
Marie. Eduardo. Sophie
Thomas Corriveau
Canada
A mesmerizing contemplation of moving bodies and painting, with three magnificent performers of contemporary dance from Montreal, Marie Mougeolle, Eduardo Ruiz Vergara and Sophie Corriveau.
Director Biography – Thomas Corriveau
Thomas Corriveau made his first films in the 1980s and pursued a career as a visual artist, working in the fields of drawing, painting, printmaking and animation. His works are part of various private and public collections and he has exhibited regularly in Canada and abroad. He is a professor at the School of Visual and Media Arts at Université du Québec in Montréal. Since ten years, he is fully involved as an independent animation filmmaker.
A Bear Named Jesus
Terril Calder
Canada
At Aunty Gladys’ funeral, Archer Pechawis heard a tap on the window — it was a bear named Jesus, and Jesus had come for Archer’s mom. Now she’s no longer recognizable — while Jesus hangs out in the shed.
Director Biography – Terril Calder
Terril Calder is a Métis artist, born in Fort Frances, Ontario, currently residing in Toronto. Compelled by the love of hybrid media and fusion art, she currently experiments with the amalgamation in her stop frame animated films that she writes, directs, crafts and animates. The films screen nationally and internationally and have received attention, most notably an Honorable Mention at The Sundance Film Festival and at Berlinale a Canadian Genie Award Nomination as well as TIFF’s top ten list in 2011 for “Choke”. In 2016 she was awarded the Ontario Arts Council’s K.M Hunter award for her work in Media Arts
Tomato Kitchen
Junyi Xiao
China
An accident interrupted Lee’s dinner with his colleagues. The dark truth of the Tomato Kitchen along with Lee’s hidden past were revealed by this unexpected incident…
Director Biography – Junyi Xiao
Junyi Xiao is an award-winning filmmaker and animation artist. His films have been selected and screened at many international animation festivals all over the word including Annecy and Hiroshima. In 2015 and 2017, his film After School and Elsewhere were nominated for two Annie Awards.
Teeth Time
Lily Shaul
United Kingdom
Brushing your teeth is so boring ugh! Two friends are stuck in the same old routine but after an unusual encounter shakes things up might they start to see things differently?
Help Desk
Edwin Rostron
United Kingdom
A mysterious transmission revealing playful geometric possibilities. Help Desk is a hypnotic hand drawn animation, providing a meditative and contemplative space, oscillating between flatness and depth, control and instability. The film was made using an improvisational process of ‘straight ahead’ animation, and was primarily an attempt to regain some much needed focus after the fragmented years of the pandemic.
Director Biography – Edwin Rostron
Edwin Rostron lives and works in London. He has been making animated films for over 25 years and also makes paintings and drawings. Edwin’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally at galleries and film festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival, GLAS, Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, onedotzero, BFI, The Royal Academy of Arts, Camden Arts Centre, ICA, Flatpack, Close-Up Cinema, Artists’ Television Access, S1 Artspace, Imperial War Museum, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Glasgow CCA. Edwin was a Tutor on the Animation Programme at the Royal College of Art between 2016 – 2021, and has been a visiting artist at CalArts and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. In 2013 he founded Edge of Frame, a blog and ongoing series of screenings focusing on experimental animation, holding events at BFI Southbank, Barbican, Close-Up and Whitechapel Gallery.
Glitter Electron
Einosuke Yokoyama
Japan
A music video for composer E’s song “Glitter electron”, an animation work created by Chihiro Sato, Takaaki Numa and E.
This film is a glitter storm of pleasant and strange visual images and electronic sounds on the theme of electricity, which is the driving force of modern civilization.
Based on the music produced by E, Chihiro and Takaaki individually created fragmentary short episodes with various electronic motifs.
And E presented those motifs while consciously misreading the contents of each episodes, connect as visions full of animated bugs as the original music is.
Director Biography
Chihiro Sato: Freelance animation artist.
Takaaki Numa: General company employee.
E: Music producer, Visual artist
La Bee de Beeley
Sacha Beeley
United Kingdom
Everyone is jelly of Queen Bee. She loves laying eggs all day! Without her, all the bees would be stuck! She loves having everyone rely on her
Cookie Valentine and the Chamber of Horrors
Gabriela Moncayo
United Kingdom
Cookie Valentine goes to a mindfulness workshop to find herself… in a Chamber of Horrors.
Director Biography – Gabriela Moncayo
Gabi is an Ecuadorian multimedia designer, animator and filmmaker currently based in London. She loves jumping from different mediums, from paper to clay to photoshop and blender, and finds joy in spreading her visual universe into multiple techniques.
One Long Bone
Slina Frich
Canada
The world of One Long Bone was born from the weariness felt from skeletal anatomy drawing assignments in college.
This animated video explores the bizarre concept of what humans may look like if our skeleton was made of one long bone.
Director Biography – Slina Frich
I’m a 2D/3D illustrator and animator who is keen to explore weird concepts in experimental projects.
This Is a Story Without a Plan
Cassie Shao
United States
Two people, and an explosion.
Director Biography – Cassie Shao
Cassie is an Animation Director currently based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Cinematic Arts at USC. Her animated works have screened at film festivals worldwide such as Annecy, Slamdance, Animafest Zagreb, Ann Arbor, SXSW, Dok Leipzig, Vienna Shorts, PÖFF Shorts and HollyShorts etc.
Shrunkulus
Axel Kinnear
Canada
I have found myself in a world of worlds . . .
An amnesiac explorer awakes one early morning, lost in a dense alien jungle. Pulled deeper into their journey by unseen forces, our explorer gets a glimpse into their destiny.
The dog ate my homework
Alexandra Lemay
Canada
The Dog Ate My Homework’ is a charming stop-motion short that sends you surfing through the digital whirlpool of the internet. When a charismatic canine gatecrashes 12-year-old Charlie’s screen, it’s a laugh-out-loud reminder of the power of focus. As the lines blur between online adventures and offline duties, it\’s a colorful call to not forget life beyond the screen.
Director Biography – Alexandra Lemay
Alexandra Lemay is a filmmaker, art director, and pop-culture aficionado. Through her unique blend of stop-motion animation and self-deprecating humor, she breathes life into stories, crafting immersive worlds from puppets to props. Her ability to reveal life’s dark little secrets through storytelling has resulted in two NFB-produced short films, ‘All the Rage’ and ‘Freaks of Nurture,’ earning acclaim as audience favorites at international festivals. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, she successfully produced and directed the independent stop-motion live-action hybrid short ‘Quick Fix.’ Fresh from directing and co-producing the stop-motion film ‘the dog ate my homework,’ commissioned by Centre VOX, Alexandra is now collaborating once again with the National Film Board of Canada to develop a horror-comedy stop-motion series.
In his Mercy
Christoph Büttner
Germany
One evening a prison director announces to a convict being executed next day. As by a miracle later at night the cell door opens. Being exhausted by endless interrogations the convict drags on through dark prison corridors. On his odyssey to gain freedom he is tossed back and forth by various mental states: his fear of being discovered, his hope for salvation and moments of sheer madness.
Director Biography – Christoph Büttner
Born in 1986 in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, Christoph Büttner didn’t have a clue of his artistic career for a very long time. 2015 his educational path led him to Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. There he delved into side streams of film making. Six years and two kids later he came up for air, holding the B.F.A. Animation in his hands. Demonstrating his focus on adult animation his graduation film is also exemplary for his special interest: achieving analog styles with digital means.
Alongside
River Park
Canada
It’s a dark night as a jolly blues tune of the 1930s plays a car drives down a road in the middle of wide sprawling fields. A young boy is sitting in the car. The boy’s father is silently driving, looking tired from the almost endless drive. Board, the boy looks out the window. From the distance he sees something rusting in the bushes.
Director Biography – River Park
River Park Is a Toronto-based Animator who loves animation, stop motion, and creating concepts for exciting ideas. Their love for animation started with the love of storytelling. Finding comfort in stories told through animation from a young age, they wanted to be a part of the creating process for the longest time. Their goal in creation is to let it tell an interesting narrative. Stories that can touch people no matter their culture or background.
The Nighthawk Is Not a Hawk
Junjie Wang
China
The Nighthawk is an ugly bird. So ugly that everyone thinks he stole the name and the Hawk demands that he relinquish it. The Nighthawk cannot accept this, but he also realizes that he\’s not much different from the Hawk.
Director Biography – WANG Junjie
Born in Zhejiang, China in 1996. Completed studies as a research student in the video program at Musashino Art University. Received master\’s degree from the Department of Animation at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media in 2023. I make VR and animation films but I like to experiment with different styles as well.
The Final Nail In The Coffin
Conor Kehelly
Ireland
A mother and son are stuck. A father is obsessing over a plank of wood in his living room. A businessman is looking for a lost hammer.
Director Biography – Conor Kehelly
I am an Irish animator currently working as a motion designer and illustrator in London. I studied animation at the Manchester school of Art, graduating with a first class honours. My work tends to focus on the chaos and painful irony that floats around our day-to-day lives as we try to make sense of the violent and unpredictable interactions we have with each other.
AND THE 2022 MADI PILLER RESIDENCY AWARD WINNER PREMIERE!!
Night Movement
Brittany Bartley
USA
Forest nightlife imagined through looping phenakistoscopes
Brittany Bartley is an independent animator with a focus on stop-motion. She grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, TX and moved to New York City where she received a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. She has since worked as a juggling equipment fabricator, photographer, and découpage artisan, all of which has fueled her interest in skilled trades and experimenting with material. She draws upon this experience to create work that is richly textured and whimsical. Brittany lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches part-time at Parsons School of Design.
TAIS 2023 Showcase is presented with the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, The Government of Ontario and the Canada Council for the Arts.