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Let’s launch 2017 with some good news: our short animation The Trump & Jesus Show was invited to screen at Shorts On Tap, an award-winning short film festival that supports the spread of awareness on social issues through film and hosts screenings in London, Berlin and Tokyo.
The showcase will take place in London on January 26th under the name TRUMPED: A Selection of Unpresidented Short Films: a bunch of despotic works depicting tyranny, bigotry and the farcical times we live in. The event will start at 7PM with a live performance by ACT ONE, film screening will be on at 8PM (exact address is 93 Feet East, Brick Lane, London E1). Get your tix in advance!
The newly elected commander in chief will not join the Q&As after the screening but our director/producer Maria Stanisheva will, so hope to see ya’ll in London!
A quick update just a day before US Presidential Elections.
The Trump and Jesus Show has reached 33 000 people via Facebook, Vimeo and YouTube. Telling by some of the comments, we’re reaching Trump supporters and managing to stir some Christian debate so thumbs up for that!
We’ve been featured in a bunch of European newspapers, part of the #EUROPEGOESUS media coverage of the 2016 US Presidential Elections: Rebubblica (Italy’s biggest daily), Le Figaro (one of top three in France), Tribune Geneve (Switzerland) and several US online media spots like The Daily Kos, The Curious Brain and numerous Vimeo channels.
We’ve also been shortlisted for the Awardeo Video of the Week competition and invite you to vote for us (please press the green ‘vote’ button and sign in with FB or Twitter), it will only take a second of your time and help us spread the word further. The competition ends on Election Day.
Thanks for your continuous support and please GO VOTE tomorrow!
FATHER – an animated-documentary produced by Maria Stanisheva while at Compote Collective and awarded 28 international awards, will be part of a very special event this week: the Animation Nights New York (ANNY) monthly screening. Looking at this moth’s selection, it looks like FATHER will be in good company so please join us for an exciting screening, followed by a Q+A with Maria and some of the other filmmakers.
ANNY will start at 8PM on Oct 26 (Wed) at 180 Maiden Lane, NY 10038. The location is quite unusual – a huge glass skyscraper in the middle of Seaport District featuring a renovated atrium plaza with a great screen, projection and sound system. Admission will be free. And if you are one of the people who don’t want to admit that Summer is now gone, feel free to bring a blanket to lounge on the indoor grass and come join us for a great selection of animation and a glass of wine or beer. Please don’t forget to RSVP for the event via Eventbrite and see you at the screening!
We’ve got some great news: ANIMADOCS is now part of NEW INC – the first museum-led incubator for art, design, and technology. This means we have a new office space and some amazing collaboration projects on the way!
An experimental initiative of the New Museum, NEW INC is a shared workspace and professional development program that brings together more than 100 cultural practitioners and creative entrepreneurs. NEW INC is dedicated to supporting innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship across art, design, and technology. It occupies eight thousand square feet of dedicated office, workshop, social, and presentation space, and each year selects an outstanding interdisciplinary community of one hundred members who are investigating new ideas and developing sustainable practices. Check out the 2016 members cohort!
The program will run for twelve months, members engage in business and entrepreneurial training sessions with seasoned experts and mentors; group critiques; peer-to-peer learning; and critical discourse about the changing nature of culture, technology, and entrepreneurship. Biannual Demo Days and the End-of-Year Showcase offer members opportunities to present their work to the public, while the annual Versions conference, copresented by NEW INC and Kill Screen, investigates how new developments in digital media are challenging and expanding our notions of perspective, perception, identity, and reality. Members also benefit from developing their ideas under the umbrella of the New Museum; they work in close proximity to Museum programming, affiliates IdeasCity and Rhizome, and anchor tenant, the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) Incubator.
We are so excited abut the program and our new Lower East Side space!
This week we are at an unusual event – IdeasCity Athens – a five-day residency that brings together emerging practitioners working at the intersection of community activism, art, design, architecture, and technology in cities around the world. The aim is to develop ideas and strategies to overcome the pressing challenges facing urban centres today.
IdeasCity Fellows (among which Maria Stanisheva) live and work in the Athens Conservatoire and transform the space into a multifunctional hub of cultural activity. The program’s taking place from the 19th to the 24th September 2016, and will culminate in a free daylong public conference featuring internationally acclaimed speakers from the fields of art, architecture,design, policymaking, and urbanism.
Spekares will include Yašar Adanalí | John Akomfrah | Sophia Al-Maria | Tania Bruguera | Nadina Christopoulou | Thomas Doxiadis | Vere van Gool | Joseph Grima | Rosanne Haggerty | dream hampton | Elina Kountouri | Lisa Phillips | George Prevelakis | Nick Srnicek | Hito Steyerl | Pelin Tan
If you happen to be in Athens check out the public conference and stop by on Sat!
Best way to start the day – our InideGoGo campaign for The Trump & Jesus Show has just reached its goal – congrats to all!
MASSIVE thanks to all 88 backers who supported us so far! We are now aiming to break our minimum goal. All additional funds we collect will be used to hire extra help with the dissemination of the short film among conservative religious communities in key swing states. So – only 3 days to go – please support, tweet, blog, share, care and tell everyone you know!
Rosi is now almost done with designs and we are moving on to production.
Let’s make this indie project go viral and #DumpTrump + using this to share our latest favorite #TangerineNightmare ;)
Thank you all once again, you rock!
The #TrumpJesusShow team
Yesterday we launched an InideGoGo campaign for our latest indie project – The Trump & Jesus Show – a short film consisting of three animated stories, each taking an artistic license to envision what an encounter between Donald Trump and Jesus Christ would look like if they happened to meet face-to-face.
We thought that instead of preaching to the converted liberals we will try to change the minds of some of the religious communities currently supporting Trump.
Our amazing project crew including a designer, animator and composer have all volunteered to work for just half of their normal rates while Maria and Todd will be directing and producing the film for free BUT we still need your help! If you like the idea, please chip in, tweet, blog, share, care and tell everyone you know, let’s make this go viral and #dumptrump, oh.. and please use #TrumpJesusShow.
HUGE thanks to all 29 backers who supported us on day one! We are 14% there – not bad, ya’ll!
Following the online animated campaign #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship we did in July (6 million views in its first week, featured in The Independent, New York Times and EURONEWS), our partnership with Human Rights Watch continues!
ANIMADOCS was invited to create the visuals for another HRW report on the issue of Migrant Domestic Workers in Oman. Over 130,000 women have left their home countries to cook, clean and look after children while living in their employers’ homes. But behind closed doors, many of these women are beaten, starved, and forced to work up to 21 hours in a day.
The project is called I WAS SOLD and the captivating illustrations and art direction were once again done by the amazing Rositsa Raleva (check out the 6 illustrations she created in this gallery).
Working on important social issues always feels right, we look forward to more partnerships with HRW!
We were commissioned by Human Rights Watch to work on an online animated awareness campaign called #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship. The campaign was part of HRW’s report Boxed In: Women and Saudi Arabia’s Male Guardianship System and was aiming to shed a light on the discriminatory practices women have to live with on a daily basis. We chose three scenarios from the numerous interviews conducted by the research and created 3 short animated clips.
The campaign was launched by HRW on Sunday, 17 July, and has been seen by over 2 million people in less than three days!
The Independent (UK) first wrote about the project with the title “The cartoon that shows how ridiculous Saudi laws are for women” and opening paragraph “Thousands of people have circulated a short animation video designed to show the restrictions that Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system places on women”. The news spread quickly followed by an article in the New York Times focused exclusively on the three shorts and describing them scene-by-scene. EURONEWS created their own compilation of the 3 clips and the report findings. Following dozens of other articles, thousands of shares and posts across FB, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo and more we can confidently say that #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship has gone viral! If you missed it, you can watch all three clips here.
BIG thanks goes out to the entire team (with everyone working at minimum 50% deferred rates): director/producer Maria Stanisheva; art director/illustrator Rositsa Raleva; animators Andrew Embury, Jardeson Rocha and Robert Anderson; music composer and sound designer Tim Bright!
And finally, thanks to HRW commissioning producer Janna Kyllästinen and HRW executive commissioning producer Pierre Bairin for trusting us with this job and being a true pleasure to work with. Hope the campaign serves its purpose and moves Saudi laws one step closer to gender equality!