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Dear friends,
You are invited to take part in the “Human Rights Illustrated” contest, organized by The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and Compote Collective, where Maria Stanisheva will be one of the jury members. Works donated to the contest this year will be used to help improve the conditions at institutions for children with mental illness in Bulgaria. If selected, your illustration will be exhibited at a series of exhibitions, the first of which will be part of the Night/Plovdiv 2016 festival in September (a pretty amazing event!).
The Human Rights Illustrated competition is an experiment that challenges our imagination, creativity, and social sensitivity. It is an attempt to discuss human rights and focus on social issues through a medium everyone can understand. The invitation is open to a wide range of artists: web or graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, typographers, architects, conceptual artists or creative thinkers to take part via an illustration, inspired by one of the basic human rights from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Deadline: 15 August, more details here. Please share the word and apply!
Virtual Reality (VR) has been the buzzword at film festivals this year. And although we were a bit sceptical at the beginning, some of the latest VR productions we’ve seen have changed the way we imagine VR in the animation and documentary world. To start with, there was 6X9: the Guardian’s Solitary Confinement project at Tribeca Film Fest, followed by the DocX selection at HotDocs where our personal favorites were Lucy Walker’s A HISTORY OF CUBAN DANCE; NOMADS: SEA GYPSIES and Cirque du Soleil’s amazing performance INSIDE THE BOX OF KURIOS. In addition, we flew a VR eagle whose aim is to calm your mind and help your meditation practice and took part in a cardboard car crash which was interesting, to say the least…
With new VR headgear now costing as little as $90 and most productions also being available on a computer screen (where you can change your POV just like in Google Maps Street View), ANIMADOCS is excited about producing VR and is partnering up with Infinite360°, a London/NYC-based VR production company specializing in documenting a big array of virtual experiences, including some BBC docs and live concerts (you can see more about what they’ve been up to here). Infinite360° just acquired the Nokia OZO, the first ever professional 360º camera, which has some great capabilities such as real-time monitoring, faster editing turnarounds and more. We offer a full package start-to-finish VR production at promotional early-bird prices (the camera rent usually estimated at $4k per day will be available at a substantial discount as part of this deal). So, if you have an idea for a project you would like to share with the world in a new and immersive way or an event you want to promote online – give us a shout!
Our character research trip to Cuba, part of our first feature doc project Tres Revoluciónes was completed in Jan’16. As a result we made 3 short character portraits, which Maria Stanisheva showed to potential co-producers at the Berlinale Talents in Feb. We are proud to announce that we now have a German Co-producer in the house!
Dirk Simon is an award winning director and producer of documentaries, image films, and theatrical multimedia productions. Over the past 15 years, Simon has worked under extremely various conditions on five continents and in 17 countries. He debuted on German television in 2004 with his first film “Between the Lines”, questioning the price of freedom and revealing the truth about a murder case at the Berlin Wall. For his documentary “When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun”, Simon collaborated with composer Philip Glass and singer/ songwriter Thom Yorke and Damien Rice. The film received honors for Best Original Soundtrack, Best Cinematography, Best Chronicle, Best Director, and Best Feature Documentary. After living and working in the US for ten years, Simon returned to Germany in 2012, where he currently develops and produces documentaries primarily for ARTE and ZDF under his new production company BoxeeMedia.
We are very excited to have Dirk and BoxeeMedia on board and look forward to making Tres Revoluciónes together!
Our animated-documentary project FINDING HOME was selected to pitch at the Hot Docs Short Film Pitch 2016! The pitch is part of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival – North America’s largest documentary festival, conference and market.
Director/Producer Maria Stanisheva and Alexandra Lazarowich are off to Toronto where they will compete with 5 other doc projects for three awards, provided by BravoFACT. BIG thanks to our designer Vicky Knysh for the amazing work on the project so far and to consultant Theo Ushev for his support.
Keep your fingers crossed!
Welcome to ANIMADOCS
Previously Maria Stanisheva’s personal portfolio, now an indie production house working in animation, documentary and everything in-between!
We’ve got some great collaboration projects coming up and will try to keep you posted on this blog, FB and Twitter #animadocs
Take a look around and get in touch if you like what you see ;)
Hey ya’all
I’ve been working as a freelance Video Director/Producer for Nomadic Learning since June 2014. Here is a SHORT REEL of some of the 22 educational animation videos I’ve created for them in the past 18 months.
Designs by Eddie Song, Jing Wei, Sara Bennett aka Shabello and Oliver Sin.
Animation by Eddie Song, Jenni Yang, Tatiana McCabe, Shabello and Oliver Sin.
Directed/Produced by Maria Stanisheva [22 x 3′], 2014-2015
Music by Kottarashky & the Rain Dogs: “Aman Aman” 2012
Creative Director: Amanda Burr
© Nomadic Learning
Artwork by Oliver Sin
Back from Cuba after almost a month of researching and shooting for a fundraising trailer for my new project TRES REVOLUCIONES (old working title SIN PALABRAS), co-directed with Diana Ivanova. Currently in quite a rush trying to put something together for Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival), where I will be meeting with possible German co-producers.
I am looking for an intern, fluent in Spanish and English who would translate three interviews and a bit of verite footage. The total time of the material to be translated is about 5 hours and the gig will be online, so working from home it should take about 3-4 days in total using a simple subtitling software called InqScribe. This gig will be considered a work test. Upon successful completion I am happy to provide recommendations and paid work once the project launches (hopefully in a few months time).
If interested, please send me a short paragraph about yourself and a resume at mail@mariastanisheva.com
I’ve been working on a new Cuban documentary project together with my friend director/writer Diana Ivanova. The working title is SIN PALABRAS (Without Words) . It will look into issues like race and equality as we follow several Afro-Cuban artists while the island transitions into a new phase.
We are off to Cuba on 15 Dec, researchng and shooting together with cinematographers Dafne Capella and Roni Maltz, but before we go I am going to ask for a big favor. We want to bring small pieces of equipment and donate them to some of the artists, so if you have some of these cluttering your home and still in good condition, please consider giving away:
- PHONES: iPhones, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry, any version of a ‘smart’ phone that has internet capabilities
- DIGITAL STILL CAMERAS: all types
- DIGITAL VIDEO CAMERAS: small size flip-cam style or other
- USB DRIVES: I know you guys have everything “up in the cloud” now but these thumbdrives are very precious when there is limited internet and few personal computers
- TABLETS and MP3 players
Here is where to send your contribution (or give us a call for a pick-up):
New York: 276 Humboldt Street, apt #3F, Brooklyn 11206 (Maria: 347 265 6618)
Bonn: 53113 Bonn, Goethestrasse 29, Germany (Diana: 172 389 6936)
Rio De Janeiro: 99-801 R. Mal. Mascarenhas de Morais, Copacabana, Rio de janeiro 22030-040, Brazil (Dafne: 219 981 130 10)
Sofia: 9 Burel Street, apt. 13, Sofia 1408, Bulgaria (Dani: 0887 302 593)
A huge THANK YOU upfront and don’t forget to add batteries and chargers ;)
Media and Diversity, the public campaign, which I initiated and produced on behalf of British Council Bulgaria in 2008, is still alive and kicking!
One of the 5 animated clips we created back then, the one about HIV/AIDS, has been selected to take part in an exhibition titled AIDS - BASED ON A TRUE STORY. The exhibition is hosted by the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden, Germany and consists of posters and works of art, documents, films, and pop culture media from all over the world that helps us understand how the public perception of AIDS has changed over the past three decades (you can see how it all looks here).
Please check out our AIDS clip below and if in Dresden - go see the exhibition, it will be on until 21 Feb.
Watch the other shorts in this series:
and if you happen to be in Bulgaria where the campaign started, please cosnider joing the Facebook group "We are people first, then we are different"/"Първо сме хора, после сме различни", which is an independent online community named after the campaign's slogan with almost 8000 members and counting!
MEDIA AND DIVERSITY was realized by studio Enthusiasm and directed by Vessela Dantcheva and Ivan Bogdanov.
