GIRAF Festival of Independent Animation

Closing Date of Opportunity: 11/28/2021

Name or Organization: Quickdraw Animation Society

Website: http://giraffest.ca

Post Content: Calgary's Quickdraw Animation Society is bringing the world's best animation to audiences across Canada with the GIRAF festival of independent animation, streaming on demand from November 19-28. Highlights from our 2021 lineup include:

• Featured artist Renee Zhan (O Black Hole, Reneepoptosis), whose inventive short films have won major awards at Sundance, SXSW, and TIFF, along with showing at every major animation festival out there. Zhan will host a retrospective of her work, along with an online workshop.

• An experimental shorts pack curated by anonymous Instagram account 24 Memes Per Second, who will also host a meme-making workshop for animation fans inspired by their unique take on (and encyclopaedic knowledge of) the medium.

• 86 (and counting) short films in 11 screening packages. Over a quarter of the films in this year’s lineup will be making their Canadian festival premiere, including films from Joanna Priestley, Grace Lee and Einar Baldvin. The lineup also features recent films from leading voices in independent animation like Yoriko Mizushiri, Felix Colgrave, Lia Bertels, Terril Calder, Emily Pelstring, and Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León.

• A 35th anniversary screening of acclaimed Czech stop-motion feature Krysar, a dark retelling of the Pied Piper fable heavily inspired by German Expressionism and medieval artwork, and presented from a brand-new 35mm scan.

• Top 3, audience choice winner at 2019’s Outfest LA, an animated romantic comedy from Swedish director Sofie Edvarsson about what happens after falling madly in love.

• A panel discussion on video game animation with a mix of major studio artists and indie developers, featuring Asemta Bhattad (Ubisoft Toronto), Craig Adams (Superbrothers), Pedro Medeiros (Celeste, TowerFall), and Price Morgan (EA Vancouver).

• Festival artwork and trailer by Calgary-based artist and animator Molly Little.

Full festival details are available at https://giraffest.ca.

Follow us on Instagram (@quickdrawyyc) for updates!