DANIELLA GLEESON

DOUGLAS MARTIN

REE MCSWEEN

ROSE BOND

Animator

Portland based animator Rose Bond was born in Canada and raised in the Pacific Northwest.  With a background in drawing and painting, she made the transition to filmmaking in the late 1970s.

Her method of animating is unique in that she does not use a camera.  The images in her films are made by drawing and painting directly on clear film leader.  In the past nine years Ms. Bond has created four award winning short films, GAIA’S DREAM, NEXUS, CERRIDWEN’S GIFT, and, most recently, MALLACHT MACHA (Macha’s Curse).  The films’ beauty and vitality have brought her international attention.

During her college years, Bond noticed the details of women’s lives played out across the bowls of antiquity; it sparked an interest in archeology and ancient fables.  When a few years later, she began researching women’s history, she encountered a series of Celtic myths about women.  The stories lent themselves to animation through characters who changed forms and told their tales in an ancient, oral, storyteller manner.

As an independent filmmaker, Bond is in full charge of her production.  It is a time-consuming, precise art form.

Instead of drawing large images to be shot onto film, Bond draws and colors each frame directly onto a clear celluloid strip, under a magnifying glass.  The result is a rapidly-moving film, pulsating with an energy that enhances the fable.  “I want my art to become part of a dialogue.  There is an excitement that comes in women redefining themselves.  Whether you approach it from an entertainment level, an intellectual level or a political level, I want my films to contribute to those ideas.  It seems worthwhile to me.”

GRETA SCHILLER

Writer/Producer/Director

Greta Schiller is an award-winning lesbian independent filmmaker.  For fifteen years she has made documentaries which utilize archival footage to reclaim lost or overlooked aspects of cultural history.  Her groundbreaking film, BEFORE STONEWALL, for which she won an Emmy Award for Best Cultural or Historical Film and a Nomination for Best Director, traces the origins of America’s Gay and Lesbian subculture.

Schiller co-produced and directed INTERNATIONAL SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM, the story of an interracial, all-female jazz band which rose to prominence during World War II.  The film was selected for the 1986 New York Film Festival and has won awards in festivals worldwide, including First Place, Blue Ribbon Award at the Oberhausen Film Festival.  This toe-tapping film tells the story of the swinging, multi-racial all-women jazz band of the 40s.  A 16-piece band with a strong brass section, heavy percussion, and a deep rhythmic sense, the Sweethearts were not jsut a novelty but featured many of the best female musicians of the day.

Schiller later produced and directed MAXINE SULLIVAN: LOVE TO BE IN LOVE, a musical profile of this once famous black jazz singer who was prohibited from making the cross-over from radio to television in the Fifties.

Her most recent film is WOMAN OF THE WOLF, a half-hour fairy tale based on a story written in 1904 by American poet and author Renee Vivien.  Two opposing versions of the same narrative are told: one verbally, by Pierre Lenior a male narrator at a dinner party, and one visually through the behavior of a woman who meets him on a fantasy cargo boat.  Intercut, the two different aesthetics create a tension between the different world views of the woman and the man.  Schiller is a founder and board member of Jezebel Productions, based in New York and London.  She was awarded the first ever U.K. Fulbright Arts Fellowship in Film in 1989.

MARTIN ROSE

Animator

Working extensively as a freelance animator, Martin Rose’s most notable project was to direct a short film, “Trawna tuh Belvul” produced at the National Film Board of Canada’s Pacific Centre production studio.  It is an innovative interpretation of a sound poem written and performed by Earle Birney, about a train and it’s array of occupants travelling between Toronto and Belleville, Ontario. The film was made with cut paper puppets, animated on a multi-plane camera.  It opened the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and competed at the North West Film and Video Festival in Portland, Oregon.  “Trawna tuh Belvul” won Best Animated Film at The Vancouver International Film Festival in October of 1994.

For five years Martin Rose taught animation to children at Arts Umbrella, Canada’s only art and performing arts centre for young people.  In the autumn of 1994, he started teaching introductory animation at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

Martin will be presenting a workshop using cutout animation techniques.  He will focus on two methods: a very simple cutout puppet and a simple puppet using hinged joints.  Cutout animation is not well known in North America, but is used extensively in Europe, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as in Russia and China.  It involves animating two-dimensional puppets frame by frame under an animation camera.  Thursday evening’s presentation will include Russian and Canadian films that influenced Martin’s work.