OIAF announces 2010 jury

Munro Ferguson
Born in New York City in 1960, Ferguson took a very early interest in cartooning and made his first film, When I Get Older, at age 7. He studied painting and drawing at the Banff Centre and received a BA in philosophy from the University of Toronto. He continued to make films, becoming a core member of the Funnel Film Group in 1980. His science comic strip Eureka was syndicated in over 30 newspapers around the world. In 1994, he joined the NFB English Program’s Animation Studio, where he wrote, directed and animated How Dinosaurs Learned to Fly (1995). In 1995, he began working for the legendary Roman Kroitor at IMAX Corporation, writing, animating and advising on the development of SANDDETM, a 3D stereoscopic animation technique. He returned to the NFB in 1998, and since then has been training other NFB animators in this innovative system. Ferguson has created two stereoscopic animations with SANDDETM: Falling in Love Again, winner of the 2004 Genie Award for Best Animated Short, and June, an elegy for his friend and mentor, artist Joyce June Wieland.  In 2008 he was Animation Director for Facing Champlain a NFB production for the 400th anniversary of Quebec City. Currently, he is developing Neuropolis, a 3D film about the brain produced in collaboration with the Montreal Neurological Institute and the NFB.

Maya Yonesho
Born in Hyogo, Japan 1965. Yonesho studied Visual Design and Animation at Kyoto Saga University of Arts, which led her to work as an art teacher at a junior high school for 6 years. She returned to college to study Japanese painting and conceptual & media art at Kyoto City University of Arts, while also working as a clay animator for a children’s TV program. While on exchange at the Royal College of Art, UK she made her first abstract animated short film, which synchronized 13 international languages under the theme “we can understand each other without understanding each language”. She received her MA of fine art in 1998, and began making independent films including believe in it (1998), which won the Excellence prize from the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan that same year. She worked for the Eesti Joonisfilm Studio in Estonia from 2002-2003 under the Japanese Government Study Program for Promising Artists and Art Fellowships. Her films introspection(1998), believe in it(1998), learn to love(1999), countdown(2002), Üks Uks(2003), and Winer Wuast (2006) have been shown at numerous international festivals and museums around the world. She has also conducted animation workshops in Taiwan, Norway, Croatia, Israel and Poland, and has lectured at Kyoto Seika University since 2000.

Frances Leeming
Born in Toronto in 1951. Leeming’s work as a media artist uses film to re-animate the image archives of 20th century popular culture. Her work has been presented across Canada, the U.S., Britain, Poland and Italy. Her collage animation, The Orientation Express (1987) has been screened internationally, including: Festival de Cine y Vídeo joven de La Habana, Cuba; Seattle Women’s Film Festival; ASIFA Animation Festival; San Francisco International Animation Festival; and Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago. Her most recent collage animation Genetic Admiration (2005) won the Grand Prize at Images Festival, Toronto, and was nominated for Best Animation at the Syracuse International Film and Video Festival. The film was also recently featured in the symposium Animation/Automation, part of Screen Magazine’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester UK.   Genetic Admiration (chapter) appears in Jackie Stacey’s The Cinematic Life of the Gene, (Duke University Press, 2010) and Jennifer Fisher’s Technologies of Intuition, (YYZ/MAWA/DISPLAY CULT, 2006). Leeming’s work has been purchased by The National Gallery of Canada, PBS, Channel Four UK, SBS Australia, The Women’s Television Network and for numerous university archives throughout Canada and the U.S., and her contributions as a performance artist appear in Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars’ book, Caught in the Act- An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (YYZ Books, 2004). She currently teaches experimental animation and media studies in the Department of Film and Media, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.

INTERNATIONAL JURY FOR ANIMATED FEATURE FILMS

Atsushi Wada
Atsushi Wada was born in 1980 in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. He attended Osaka Kyoiku University, Liberal Arts School, where he began his study in animation. He graduated in 2004, and continued as a graduate student at the Image Forum Institute of the Moving Image (Tokyo) in 2005. His animated films have won awards and been seen at festivals all over the world: worm dance hand (2003) won the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Film Festival (2004); Day of Nose (2005) won the competition of the 52nd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany) and won for best short film at the Norwich International Animation Festival, Part 3 (UK); Well, That’s Glasses took the 2007 best of festival award at the Ubusara 26th International Short Film Festival (Sweden), won the Jury Award for Best Young Animation at the Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival (Brazil), and won the competition at the International Short Film Festival Winterthur International Short Film Festival Winterthur (Switzerland) in 2008. In addition to his work in film, Wada’s work for television has been broadcast since 2003. He continues to create animated works thanks to what he calls the power of inherent patience, which he credits to the love between the imagination and the bold will to achieve. Wada now works in the Animation Department of the Graduate School, Tokyo University of Arts.

Torill Kove
A Montréal animator and illustrator, Kove grew up in Norway and also spent some of her childhood in Nairobi, Kenya. She moved to Montréal in 1982 where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts at Concordia University and a Masters Degree in Urban Planning at McGill University. She has also studied architecture at Universitè De Montréal and animation at Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Torill began her animation career at the National Film Board working as an assistant on various animation and documentary projects. She has written and directed two animated shorts and written scripts for the TV series Dragon and for the animated short film Snails (), by Pjotr Sapegin. Torill’s films have received numerous international awards. Her first film My Grandmother Ironed The Kings Shirts (1999) was nominated for an Academy Award, and her second film, The Danish Poet (2006), received a Genie and an Oscar in 2007. Torill has illustrated 6 picture books, two of which she also wrote, and she periodically teaches part-time at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.

Michaela Pavlatova
Michaela Pavlátová graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 1987. Her short animation films have won numerous awards all over the world. She came to international prominence in 1991 when her short animation film “Words, Words, Words” was nominated for a U.S. Academy Award. In 1995, her animation short film “Repete” won a Golden Bear at the Berlinale. Since 1995, she has been blending live-action with her animation. From 1998 to 2001, she divided her time between Prague and San Francisco, where she worked as art director for the Wildbrain, Inc. In 2003 she directed her first all live-action film, the feature “Faithless Games”, winner of a Special Jury Mention in the New Director’s Prize competition at San Sebastian IFF.  In 2008 she directed another feature Deti noci / Night Owls which was awarded a Best Actor and a Best Actress at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.