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We have been terrible with keeping up with this blog, so we officially announce it has been moved to our FB page where you can find all the latest gossip: what’s out, who we are working with and what we are plotting! Please find us there!
Happy Monday! ANIMADOCS will be part of ANIDOK Zagreb this Saturday, a one-day intensive workshop for audio-visual professionals in the field of animated documentaries, organized by ASIFA Croatia.
Our founder Maria Stanisheva will lead the masterclass “ANIMADOCS: animation, documentary and everything in-between” which will explore different ways of mixing animation and documentary film. Case studies will include our independent projects, educational shorts, activist and human rights campaigns. The masterclass will take place on December 2, from 19:30 – 21:00 at the Tuškanac cinema.
Right before that, the incredible Swedish music video and film director and founder of FilmTecknarna Jonas Odell will hold a masterclass “What, how and why” where he will talk about what attracted him to an animated documentary, and how his vision of this genre has changed over the years. There will be lectures by Croatian film theorist Hrvoje Turković; art historian from Hungary Brigit Iványi-Bitter; and director of the German association AG Animationsfilm Annegret Richter.
The event is open and free for everyone, so please stop by if you are around!
Our friends at Nomadic Learning were awarded the 2017 Gold Winner of the Social and Collaborative Learning Award. The recognition is based on their work with large and small clients on the organizational challenges that demand a collaborative and continuous approach to learning. Nomadic has created an impactful digital learning solution which features formal and informal learning content delivered through a “social-first” learning platform that has the best engagement rates in the industry! How do they do that?: “We get and keep learners’ attention because we are relentlessly committed to quality content and design.”
Currently Nomadic features trainings in Digital Transformation, Leadership, Digital Communication and Giving Voice to Values. You can request a demo and see how it works for yourself and your team, plus you will get to see some of the short animations created by ANIMADOCS for Nomadic’s platform (over 30 and counting!).
DANGERS ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL is the fourth campaign we’ve created for Human Rights Watch which summarises the journey of a 12-year old Afghan girl who is on a horror-like quest to get to her classroom, only to find the military have occupied the school. Watch the short video and read more in our portfolio. You can also watch an 8-min documentary short created as part of the same campaign which gives an insight into the issue.
The video was released on HRW’s FaceBook page on 17 October and has accumulated over 100 thousand views in the first day of its release. Global Citizen also released a detailed reportage on the project. Our overall aim was to help HRW gather funding for girls’ community schools in Afghanistan, a practice that has proven successful over the past few years. We will know how effective the campaign has been in the following months.
Check out the characters create by Rosi Raleva:
Our founder Maria Stanisheva gave an interview for Central European University about ANIMADOCS, “art for social change”, the recent attacks on her Alma Mater in Budapest and nagyfröccs! Check out the full interview here.
Just launched our FB page where we will share more about who we are and what we do. We invite you to follow us and let us know what you think about our work. Some exciting new projects coming up real soon!
Image: Facebook
Yesterday Saudi Arabia announced that it would allow women to drive, ending a longstanding policy that has become a global symbol of the oppression of women in the ultraconservative kingdom. The change, which will take effect in June 2018, was announced in a royal decree read live on state television and in a simultaneous media event in Washington. Saudi leaders hope the new policy will help the economy by increasing women’s participation in the workplace. Many working Saudi women spend much of their salaries on drivers or must be driven to work by male relatives.
According to the latest New York Times article “rights groups and Saudi activists have long campaigned for the ban to be overturned, and some women have been arrested and jailed for defying the prohibition and taking the wheel.” One of the campaigns quoted in the article as leading to the big change is Together to End Male Guardianship: a campaign created by ANIMADOCS for Human Rights Watch that was rated “HRW’s most viewed video on Facebook for 2016”. The grassroots movement that the campaign created has led to over 14,000 Saudi women signing a petition asking for the government policy to be changed.
ANIMADOCS is thrilled to have a small part in this historic change, and hopes this will be just the beginning for women in Saudi Arabia! Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, said women would be able to obtain driver’s licenses without having to ask permission of their husbands, fathers or any male guardian — despite so-called “guardianship” laws that give men power over their female relatives. Under these laws, women still cannot travel abroad, work or undergo some medical procedures without the consent of their male “guardian,” often a father, a husband or even a son.
Excited to announce that ANIMADOCS will be part of Ideas City NYC – a free public event at the Sara D. Roosevelt Park, just a block away from the New Museum this Saturday, 16 Sept where “a distinguished roster of participating artists, architects, activists, and community builders will present an array of innovative ideas”. This will be a daylong investigation of strategies, ideas, and propositions featuring artist talks, initiatives by local organisations, performances, and workshops all themed around “100 Actions for the Future City”.
Maria Stanisheva will take part in the civic platform by joining a panel discussion with selected fellows from the Athens edition that will focus on the group projects created during the residency and will take place at the Forum Stage at 1.20 p.m. She will also present ANIMADOCS and our latest project FINDING HOME on climate refugees as part of the Actions for The City presentations at the Assembly at 4:30 p.m. ANIMADOCS’ recent work will be screened all day long on a LED truck that will be installed at the park ;)
Here are a few more highlights of the program: Tania Bruguera on migration as civic intervention, David Byrne’s “Reasons to be Cheerful,” a conversation with Kemi Ilesanmi on community building, Trevor Paglen’s research on surveillance, a screening by Superflex, and Mel Chin’s presentation of his most recent work. Additional speakers include Tatiana Bilbao, Majora Carter, Nadina Christopoulou, Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, Justin Garrett Moore, Rosanne Haggerty, dream hampton, Leslie Koch, Eric Liu, Mil M2, MTL+, Paul Ramírez Jonas, and Jonathan Rose, as well as a panel of mayors including Kasim Reed of Atlanta, Gregor Robertson of Vancouver, and Maurice Cox, former mayor of Charlottesville, VA.
A series of workshops, debates, and panel discussions will be held on-site. Programs include a workshop by Decolonize This Place; a panel discussion on cooperative real estate with 596 Acres, NYC REIC, Ecovillagers Cooperative, and Flux Factory; Black Gotham walking tours led by Kamau Ware; Columbia University’s GSAPP debates; a collective publication compiled by Manolis Daskalakis-Lemos; a conversation on food and social justice organized by Ghetto Gastro; a workshop on how to run for mayor by Ingrid LaFleur, and a conversation on Chinatown between Robert Lee and Mei Lum. Additional participants include Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, BUFU, Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter, Afaina de Jong, Angela Dimayuga, Distinguished Diva, Tanya Fields, Jeff Gordinier, JJ Johnson, New Negress Film Society, Paolo Patelli, Giuditta Vendrame, LinYee Yuan, and presentations by The Rockefeller Foundation Fellows.
For more information, check out the full day schedule and join the FB event.
Happy to announce that our short The Tump & Jesus Show has been selected to screen within the Comedy/Drama section of Revolution Me Film Festival – “where filmmakers seek independence”. The screening will be held on Sunday, 13 August, 2PM at the Spike Lee Theatre (1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY).
Check out the full festival schedule and get your tickets in advance. Looks like an interesting indie film selection and the best part – our fabulous co-director/producer Todd Letherman will be there to talk about the film and answer any questions you might have!
Human Rights Watch recently released the third project we created for them called IT’S A MEN’S CLUB – an online animated awareness campaign, part of HRW’s report “Discrimination Against Women in Iran’s Job Market”. Laws and policies that discriminate against women interfere with Iranian women’s right to work: their inability to travel, prohibitions on entering certain jobs, and an absence of basic legal protections.
Last year, we created I WAS SOLD on the rights of migrant domestic workers in Oman and TOGETHER TO END MALE GUARDIANSHIP on women’s rights violations in Saudi Arabia in regards to the local male guardianship law. One of the three clips from this campaign was the ‘most viewed HRW online video of 2016’, over 10 million people saw the campaign online with some incredible media coverage from the New York Times, the Independent, Euronews and more. We are exceptionally pleased with the fact that the grassroots movement #togethertoendmaleguardianship has picked up and according to CNN and BBC over 14,000 Saudi women have signed a petition asking for the government policy to be changed.
ANIMADOCS is proud to collaborate with HRW and excited to be part of the much needed waves of change that the organization is creating across the world.