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The National Film Board has teamed up with the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in the Hothouse program to address underrepresentation of Indigenous creators in film animation, and today the NFB has released three works to commemorate Animation Week.
Kassia Ward was born in Edmonton and raised on the Enoch Cree Nation. Her short film Collector explores the concept of semi-private spaces and how we act when we forget that we might be being watched. See the short here: https://www.nfb.ca/film/collector
The Fake Calendar by Meky Ottawa from the Atikamewk Nation in Quebec provides a neon glimpse at how people come up with interesting and creative ways to avoid social functions, in favour of their own private space. Watch the short here: https://www.nfb.ca/film/fake-calendar
Christopher Gilbert Grant, a young Mi’kmaq artist from the Pabineau First Nation in New Brunswick who is living with schizoaffective disorder, directed XO Rad Magical, a personal lyrical poem that shows how there is beauty in the brains of those who are at war with themselves. See it here: https://www.nfb.ca/film/xo-rad-magical/
Also for Animation Week the NFB is free streaming other works. They will all remain online at https://www.nfb.ca/ as a celebration of great Canadian animation.
World Premiere: Meet Annie and take a whirlwind tour through her busy world while discovering the power that lies in the small choices we make every day in Winnipeg animator Anita Lebeau’s A Change of Scenery.
Ottawa-born filmmaker David Barlow-Krelina’s computer-animated Caterpillarplasty is a prescient, grotesque sci-fi satire that lifts plastic surgery to another level.
In Bulgarian-born, Montreal-based animator Alex Boya’s Turbine, a pilot crash-lands into his home and his face has been replaced by a turbine. To save their marriage, his wife takes drastic action.
Inspired by a real bear that once lived in Stanley Park, Sundance Award-winning Vancouver filmmaker Julia Kwan’s first animated film The Zoo (NFB/Fire Horse Productions) follows the parallel lives of a polar bear cub and a Chinese boy who visits him until they’re both in their twilight years.