Womanimation! 2018 visits Framingham, offering international animated tales by women

Womanimation! 2018 visits Framingham, offering international animated tales by women

The premiere showcase in the United States of international women’s animated short films will visit Framingham for a special one-day only engagement on Saturday, June 30th.
Womanimation! screens at Amazing Things Arts Center in Framingham, allowing animation aficionados the chance to sample some of the world’s best animated shorts, culled from hundreds of submissions from women around the globe.
Toni Pennacchia, Creative Director of MergingArts Productions, explains the festival concept. "As the name implies, the festival presents acclaimed animated shorts created by women. We feel women animators or "Womanimators" get lost in the shuffle at some of the larger festivals - even those dedicated to either women’s films or animation."

One might expect a women’s festival to have a decidedly feminist slant, but Pennacchia says the festival is more about the talent than an overt agenda. "Not to say the women don’t bring their unique perspectives," she explains, "but you don’t think of Mira Nair or Lynne Ramsay, for example, making ‘good films for women’; they just make good films."

This year’s program is quite diverse in its mix of themes, animated styles, and geography, with a select program of twelve short films from ten countries on four continents. The festival includes seven US or world premieres and clocks in at 83 minutes.

Pennacchia says the festival programming goal is to find the balance between being entertaining and challenging for the audience, presenting a diversity of thematic and visual motifs in roughly the length of a typical feature film.

The festival films encompass media from hand-drawn 2D, to puppetry, paper cut outs, fabric and charcoal, to 3D modeling. Pennacchia observes, "One interesting thing about this year’s festival is the line between 2D (traditional hand-drawn) and 3D (computer animation) is blurring - several of the films blend techniques, putting new twists on traditional forms of animation."

Some themes reappear throughout the program. Several films explore the cycle of life and aging, including Gelato, a tale of love, youth, and ice cream; Saving Pooh about lost childhood memories, and Tweet-Tweet, imagining life as a tightrope to be carefully walked.

As animation is an imaginative medium, it is no surprise that several films delve into the bizarre, from saving house spirits from predators in Count Your Curses to an enthusiastically curious cow in A Chronic Circus to an elaborate seaside funereal ritual in Grandpa Walrus to gambling forest creatures in Nocturne.

In a further acknowledgement of achievements of women in animation, the festival commissions previous festival participants to create awards for winners of this year’s festival competition.

The festival screens Saturday, June 30th, at 4:00 pm, 6:00 pm, and 8:00 pm, and tickets are $10. At each screening, the festival presents a slideshow with music introducing the filmmakers beforehand, and audiences vote for their favorite films to determine one of the two festival awards. Before and after screenings, DJ Madame B will weave soundscapes created by women across the globe. Festival organizers will be in attendance to introduce the program.

MergingArts Productions is an organization dedicated to cultural programming encompassing film, visual arts, music, technology and media. Amazing Things Arts Center is a local hub of energy and creativity and a gathering place that makes the arts available, affordable and accessible.

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For more information, contact:

Ms. Toni Marie Pennacchia
Creative Director
MergingArts Productions
mergingarts@gmail.com
401-359-2576
http://www.mergingarts.org