ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Educators Forum (AEF) has announced the six recipients of this year’s AEF Faculty Grants program. This year’s recipients were selected from a pool of creative, talented artists and filmmakers from across the United States. Applications for this year’s grants were received from educators from Australia, Canada, the West Indies, Wales and the United States.
AEF Faculty Grants are designed to provide support for individuals or groups with reasonable expenditures associated with research, scholarly activity or creative projects in the field of animation. Grants are open to both full- and part-time faculty at accredited post-secondary institutions.
In alphabetical order, the recipients of this year’s AEF Faculty Grants are:
- Catriona Baker, associate professor and chair of animation and VFX at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design, Massachusetts, was given an award to support her 2D fine art frame-by-frame animated short film Ball Lightning, a story follows a German refugee who immigrated to the United States, after being forced to leave behind her infant daughter during WWII.
- Mari Jaye Blanchard, associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, was awarded funds to support the completion of her animated short film (re)TIRED, a 2D hand-drawn animated short film exploring themes of aging, employment, and the planet’s changing climate.
- Mindy Johnson, award-winning author and adjunct professor at California Institute of the Arts, California, was given funds to support development to bring century-old artwork by the earliest known female animator to life for her documentary film, The Only Woman Animator – Bessie Mae Kelley & Women at the Dawn of Industry.
- Stephan Leeper, professor of animation at Central Michigan University, Michigan, was given an award to support development on The Creation Poem Project, an eight-minute animated film with original musical score and spoken-word performance, based on James Weldon Johnson’s well-known African American poem.
- Sujin Kim, assistant professor at Arizona State University, Arizona, was provided funds to assist in the completion of her 3D animated short film Cunabula, a story of a mixed-race adoptee’s struggles for acceptance into society in the aftermath of the Korean War.
- Zachary Zezima, associate professor at California State University, California, was given an award to support animation work on his short documentary film The Inevitable Return of an Atomic Being, which explores the effects of military technology and atomic testing on surf culture in the United States.
ASIFA-Hollywood is a professional organization dedicated to promoting the art of animation and celebrating the people who create it. Today, ASIFA-Hollywood, the largest chapter of the international organization of ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation), supports a wide range of animation activities and preservation efforts through its membership. Current initiatives include the Animation Archive, Animation Aid Foundation, animated film preservation, animation open source support, special events, screenings and the annual Annie Awards.
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More