Fakeha Naeem, Contributing Writer
The Richmond Animation festival started as a creative initiative of three artists and animators — Zack Williams, Jordan Bruner and Dash Shaw. This year marked their fourth festival, celebrating short films from artists all around the world and Q&As with awarded animators.
Williams enjoyed animation from a very early age and studied traditional animation, worked in commercials and later realized working in 3D allowed more creativity and gave more freedom.
“We both got interested in animation when there wasn’t much awareness of animation and independent films, we just wanted to recreate those instances where people would come out and see films and share our passion, which is very important,” Williams said. “I looked into animation as another medium, pushing it into the fine art space. We are taking our shared appreciation for that kind of animation into the festival.”
Bruner, a VCU alumnae and Williams’ partner, started as an illustration major but transitioned into animation. Bruner discovered the work of Martha Colburn, an artist whose work was based on puppetry, animation and stop motion which Bruner found fascinating.
“I felt like those two worlds fuse together in a way that felt exciting,” Bruner said.
The husband and wife duo moved to Richmond in 2019, giving them more physical space to work on their creative projects. The animation festival came when the couple lived in New York and Bruner curated a night of animated films, showing works of artists she knew and films she liked at an Equity Gallery, a small space which filled up quickly and generated a lot of interest which she thought would be a great thing to continue.
“New York offers lots of opportunities to see animations in person; however, in Richmond, there wasn’t a specific event dedicated to animations, so we just thought it would be a great opportunity to share the work that we really liked,” Bruner said
The festival has gotten bigger over the years. This year the event was broken down into two days, with a shorts program held on April 25 at Studio Two Three, showing short films contributed by international artists from 10 different countries including Argentina and Finland.
On April 26 there was a screening of the short film, “Boys go to Jupiter” by Julian Glander, followed by a question and answer panel series with the artist himself and Shaw.
“The experimental animation community isn’t massive, so it feels natural to include an international group of filmmakers in our shorts program. Our mission is to share this work within our community as a way to gather in person and be inspired together,” Bruner stated.
Julia Tadisco, an artist and director from Hungary spoke about her short film “Children of the Bird” shown at the festival. The film revolved around kids having different powers — one has the power to create and the other to destroy.
“This is my fourth short film that is being shown at the festival. I’m interested in environmental and mental health topics. After showing my work to the audience at the festival, I would like to reach other audiences outside through my web series that I am currently working on,” Tadisco said.
Shaw is an animator and comic artist. He spoke about how excited he is for Richmond to experience foreign animations from artists around the world.
“The things you see are different from Sundance, there are different perspectives from worldwide animators, an eye-opening experience, which we are hoping to do for Richmond,” Shaw said.
The durations of the short films varied, “Action Bog” was a one-minute watch. The lengthiest short film “Papillon,” ran for 14 minutes. A total of 11 short films were screened at Studio Two Three, covering a variety of themes and storylines for the audience to enjoy.
“Well Wishes My love” is a nine minute Swedish/Malaysian production by Gabriel Gabriel Garble, also screened at 2023 Sundance festival. The animation is about a boy who films textures in nature for a friend with a prosthetic arm, created in line style showing connectedness.
The international artists contributing their work for this event were either contacted directly or through their distributors by the festival organizers.
There are many short films and animation shorts available online but Shaw believes that seeing animation on big screens is an emotional experience.
Shaw was excited about Glander’s movie “Boys to Jupiter.” This would be Glander’s first movie to ever be shown in the festival, starring many famous voices such as Jack Corbett, Janeane Garofalo and Sarah Sherman to name a few.
For future information and volunteer opportunities follow the organizers at @richmondanimationfest.