CHECK OUT TRANSFIGURATION INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL NOW!!!
May 17th 2023 at Comfort Station Chicago, Curated by Jonni Phillips. Special thanks to Sarah Schmidt and Malt Adult.
This has been a dream of mine to program a screening like this for a long time and I’m really happy with how it came out!!
FOLLOW THE FILMMAKERS!!!
PART 1: WAKE UP!!!!!!!!
1. The Retro Comeback Bad Experience - Griffin Lewis - Twitter
Amazing glitchcore video from 2013 by the cocreator of Friendship is Witchcraft- I used to hangout in his livestream chats and watch him edit this video when I was 14 or 15. Griffin was always a huge influence on my editing sensibility as he was the first person I ever saw do it in those streams. I’ve always wanted to open a screening with this video and now it has happened.
2. Free TV - Jennifer Nie - YouTube - Instagram - Twitter
Jennifer is one of the best emerging animators today- She just released her amazing grad film Parrots, which really blew me away, and is one of my favorite shorts now.
3. No Other One - Asaki Nishino - Vimeo - Instagram - Twitter
Asaki Nishino is one of my new favorite animators. Last year she released a film called “Nowhere” which was one of my favorite shorts from last year.
4. Church of Bird - Jacob Sluka - Instagram - Vimeo
Jacob Sluka was majorly inspirational to me when I was first starting out, and this was one of the films by him that blew me away when I was younger.
5. Cock-a-doodle-doo - Noah Malone - Instagram - Website
Beluga is one of my all time favorite shorts, I think it’s incredible.
7. Pray Me, Rosemary - Kyu Ri Park - Vimeo
Pray Me, Rosemary was a huge influence on me when I was first starting out- A really incredible film that deserves way more recognition.
PART 2: SOMETHING IS HAPPENING TO ME, I CAN FEEL IT!!!!!!!!
8. Lesson 2 - Dena Springer - Instagram - Website
Dena is another new favorite animator- Her short “Boys Clap, Girls Dance” from last year was one of my favorites.
9. S.M.I.L.E. - Isabel Higgins - Instagram - Vimeo
Luca is one of the best living animators in my opinion, all of his work is incredible and really worth checking out- This is one of my recent favorites by him.
12. A Single Tear - Amy Lockhart - Instagram - Website
Amy is one of my biggest artistic influences, this was one of the first shorts I saw by her. She was giving an artist talk at an animation high school program I was attending and she brought cutouts from this and other films by her. Really life changing!
11. See Ya, Mr. Banno! - Yoko Yuki - Instagram - Website
Yoko is another new favorite, everything I’ve seen by her is amazing. Her short “In the Backyard, Inside the Teeny Weeny Pocket” from last year was one of my favorites of the year.
13. Lizard Ladder - Ted Wiggin - Website - Instagram
Ted is a mastermind- Lizard Ladder is an all-time classic that he made in animation software he himself created. He’s the GOAT so he put the software up online for free- https://vimeo.com/488504570
Intermission - The Tale of Despereaux - Harrison and Parker - Harrison’s Instagram - Parker’s Instagram
PART 3: I AM TRAPPED IN A VIRTUAL PRISON, I NEED TO BREAK FREE!!!!!!!!!
14. Windows_h264_01 - Ingo Raschka - Instagram - Website
Ingo is another mastermind with an awesome body of work that I feel deserves more recognition- This is a smaller piece by her that she more for a class we took in college called World Building that blew my mind.
15. I Made You This - Zach Dorn - Instagram - Vimeo
Victoria is one of my best friends and collaborators, this is an amazing live action film she made entirely by herself, it's like watching a live action version of her animations.
17. Economics in Chateau Versailles - Danielle Kogan - YouTube - Twitter
RICT is an awesome film by the genius hacker mastermind Natalie Baber. I saw her make this off and on over the course of a few years and the final product is seriously amazing.
19. Inside the Digi-Tale - Fernanda Goshdarlin - Instagram - Vimeo
Fernanda's a universally beloved sweetheart who's been making tons of incredibly charming and adorable shorts and this is one of my favorites by her.
20. Unfriended - Josh Weisbrod - Instagram - Website
Unfriended is an amazing bizarre and hilarious film about social media anxiety- Josh was a huge influence on me when I was younger and this is his incredible thesis film from 2015.
PART 4: MY MIND IS DRIVING ME CRAZY, THE LONGING IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR, THE TRANSFORMATION HAS BEGUN!!!!!!!!!
21. Queenie and the All or Nothing Thin King - Benni Quintero - Vimeo
Benni is my favorite artist of all time and very dear to my heart. This is an incredibly moving, inventive and poetic film by them that I love so much.
22. Please Look At/For Her - Chris Kim - Instagram - Twitter - Website
Jamie is another one of my favorite up and coming animators. She has a really awesome body of work that I'm really excited about, and this film is seriously amazing
25. Lord I: The Records Keeper - Lori Damiano - Instagram - Website
LORI D: Genuinely one of the biggest influences on my entire life, in every way possible. I owe everything to her and that's not an exaggeration. This is her magnum opus and my #1 favorite animated short of all time.
26. Girl Becomes Snow - Ryan Betschart/Rachel Nakawatase - Ryan’s Instagram - Rachel’s Instagram
Rachel and Ryan have been some of the biggest supporters of my work for like 8 years or something and they are such a powerful duo that it blinds me. This is an amazing film that I feel is the perfect ending to the screening.
To make this lineup, I put together a list of around 120 shorts that I loved, and then I tried to carve out an emotionally coherent throughline, where each film felt like it transitioned emotionally/thematically/etc. into the next. At the end, I was like, what should I call this? And instinctually I felt like it should be called The Transfiguration, which is a pretty crazy story from the bible, where Jesus takes his disciples onto a mountain and reveals himself as a being of light, and God screams down from heaven like “I love him!” I was raised crazy evangelical as a kid so I have a bunch of random ass bible stories baked into my brain.
