For the third year running, the Richmond Animation Festival returns to The Byrd Theatre with its signature mix of experimental flair, international shorts, and creative community energy. What started as a modest gathering of animation lovers has quietly evolved into one of the city’s most anticipated niche cultural events. Set for Sunday night, April 27, 2025, this year’s festival once again brings together boundary-pushing work from around the globe—culminating in a showcase and artist talk by acclaimed animator and multidisciplinary artist Lilli Carré.
Carré, whose work spans animation, comics, sculpture, and game design, joins the festival as the featured guest, presenting a curated selection of her own films following the initial shorts block. It’s the kind of one-night-only convergence that makes Richmond’s art scene feel alive—where independent vision gets the spotlight and audiences get a chance to engage directly with the artists shaping the future of the medium.
We had a conversation with the festival’s founders—Dash Shaw, Jordan Bruner, and Zack Williams—alongside Carré, to talk about this year’s lineup, the importance of independent animation, and what it means to build a space for experimental storytelling in a world increasingly defined by algorithmic content feeds. What follows is a conversation about curation, community, artistic risk, and why sometimes the best work is the kind you can’t stream.
Get tickets to Richmond Animation Festival HERE
T-Rav: This is the third year of the festival. What’s the growth been like over the first two years?
Jordan: The first year, I think we had around 250, maybe 300 people. Last year, we had over 500 people come out. It’s been really exciting to see it grow into a bigger community event. We’re really hoping this year we’ll get the same turnout—if not even more people.
Dash: At our mathematical trajectory, a thousand people should show up.
T-Rav: What can The Byrd hold?
Dash: Well, now that they’ve fixed their balcony seating, can’t they hold a thousand?
Jordan: I have an official number. With the balcony open, The Byrd can hold 1,392 people.
Dash: So it’s enough for this year. (All laugh)
T-Rav: That’s great optimism—and good to have the balcony back. What’s special about this year’s short animation program?
Zack: Every year, it’s a collection of films that really reflects Jordan’s and my personal tastes. I wish we had some kind of unifying thesis for why we picked everything. This year, there’s a mix of some narrative things, but it leans predominantly toward pieces that feel more like visual music—definitely more experimental than last year. It’s going to pair really well with Lilli’s work.
Dash: We have some secret screenings too.
Jordan: We’re going to try to keep it pretty short. We have a range in terms of the time period when things were made. The shorts program is going to be about 30 minutes shorter—just to try to encourage everyone to stay for Lilli and stay for the whole evening. Because it is a Sunday night, people need to go home and get ready for work the next day.
Dash: A tighter, laser-focused attack.
T-Rav: Efficient and still enriching. So how many short films are you showing in the first block? Are they from all over the world?
Jordan: (Counting) We have one, two, three, four, five, six… we’ve got eight films. They are from all over the world—including America, Russia, France, Finland.
Zack: So it’ll be the program of shorts, then an intermission. And then Lilli’s going to show some of her work and do a talk afterward.
Dash: The talk went really well last year with Robert. We were so grateful to have such an engaged audience. The audience asked such great questions. We’re excited for that again.
T-Rav: Is there any smart prerequisite—things the audience might want to watch ahead of time to engage more deeply with Lilli’s work?
Dash: I don’t feel like there’s any homework before Lilli’s program.
Jordan: If you’re curious, I was introduced to Lilli’s work through her comic books—and those won’t be part of the program—but they are beautiful and amazing.
Dash: Heads or Tails collected a bunch of her short stories, so that’s a good intro. I’ve known Lilli for many years—we were both published by Fantagraphics around the same time. She had some bigger books through Fantagraphics, like The Lagoon. She did books even before that, and since then, she’s been one of those people who makes tons of unusual small press books. But I think Heads or Tails will probably be at the Richmond Public Library—it’s maybe the most available.
Jordan: That’s the one I have—Heads or Tails. That’s what I was thinking of.
Dash: She also did a Toon Book—that’s Françoise Mouly’s kids’ comics line. The Night Parade—that one was from a few years ago.
Zack: Back when we were living in Brooklyn and going to Eyeworks, I went maybe three or four years in a row. It was maybe the only place—live, in-person—showing off-the-beaten-path experimental animation. It was always such a treat for something that’s so niche. And to be in a place where it was so thoughtfully curated and put together…
I think when we talked about doing some kind of festival, that was kind of our original inspiration point. I believe Eyeworks came to Richmond at one point, but I don’t think they do anymore. Part of our mission with this festival is to create a home for independent animation. That’s a really big source of inspiration for all three of us. But in today’s media landscape, this kind of work is often just on the internet. Doing an in-person event is important.
Jordan: Also, with Eyeworks, a lot of the things they would show you just can’t find online. And for us this year, even if something is online, it’s a really terrible, pixelated version.
T-Rav: Do you know if the title of the festival is a tribute to Ub Iwerks, the original animator who worked with Disney way back in the ’20s?
Dash: Well, the spelling is different, right? But that’s funny. That’s a good question for Lilli. I never thought of that.
T-Rav: At the end of the James River Film Festival, during the Silent Music Revival, they played one of Ub Iwerks’ Steamboat Willie shorts as a soft opener. So he was on my mind, and I wondered if the name was a tribute. We’ll follow up with Lilli on that.
Lilli Carré: You’re right—part of the choice of the name Eyeworks is the connection to Ub Iwerks!
T-Rav: Can you tell us about the Eyeworks Festival’s mission? That program meant a lot to festival organizers here and inspired the Richmond Animation Festival.
Lilli Carré: In 2010, Alexander Stewart (who went to school in Richmond) and I started the Eyeworks Experimental Animation screening series to create a theatrical space to experience this unique type of animation—something that fits in the space between animation festivals and experimental film festivals.
The idea was to build a community around this medium that we both work in and feel excited about, and to curate screenings that put new work in dialogue with older films. We wanted to explore and present work we felt was underrepresented in the history of experimental animation.
We hold screenings annually in three different cities, and this fall will mark our 14th year (we took two years off during COVID). Inviting a guest each year and having them share their full body of work has always been a big part of the project. It’s a real honor to get to be a guest myself at the Richmond Animation Fest!
T-Rav: What was your first cartoon or animated film memory?
Lilli Carré: When I was growing up, we had tapes of early CGI animation shorts—collections like The Mind’s Eye series. I watched those over and over, and they’re really at the core of my animation memory.
I also remember watching Quasi at the Quackadero by Sally Cruikshank as a kid, and my parents would sometimes do the voices. It’s such a wonderful and deeply strange world in that film—watching it definitely changed the shape of my brain at a young age.
T-Rav: Who are some of your animation, art, or filmmaking inspirations?
Lilli Carré: That’s such a big question—I have too many artists I love! But I’ll restrict myself to three favorite animators off the top of my head: Barry Doupé, Lillian Schwartz, and Yoriko Mizushiri.
T-Rav: What was the first medium you explored when you began animating?
Lilli Carré: My dad was really into Amiga computers when I was growing up, and there was a lot of enthusiasm in our house around animation possibilities. We subscribed to Amiga World magazine, and my first digital drawing was on our Amiga using Deluxe Paint III.
I also made a lot of flip books on post-it pads. My first full animation was done with pen on paper using a downshooter when I was an undergrad at SAIC in Chicago. Since then, I’ve continued making films—and other kinds of work—both physically and digitally.
T-Rav: What is your favorite form or medium to work in?
Lilli Carré: I work in an interdisciplinary way, and that’s how I think as an artist too. For me, it’s less about having a favorite medium and more about being able to move between the ones I work in—animation, drawing, ceramic sculpture, weaving, comics—and really enjoying that process.
T-Rav: Are there styles of animation you’re currently interested in exploring?
Lilli Carré: Right now I’m finishing an animation that uses painted cels and photocopied backgrounds. It’s all new terrain for me—very satisfying to paint, very frustrating to photograph.
I’ve also always been really into odd narrative and puzzle-based computer games, and I’m kind of encyclopedic in that area. This summer, when I have time off from teaching, I really want to work on creating short games that use animation in the spirit of the ones I’ve spent years immersed in.
T-Rav: Are there specific themes or symbols that consistently appear in your motion picture work?
Lilli Carré: Mutation and mutability are forms of representation I relate to most—unfixed states of being. I’m also drawn to depicting the feminine form and experience throughout history, swamps, and the relationship between virtual and physical vessels.
T-Rav: Do you talk to your animations as you make them—like in Jill? Do they cooperate?
Lilli Carré: They never cooperate, but I respect them for it.
T-Rav: There was a strange viewer experience I had while watching your work where I felt like I was echoing the forms of the animated characters. Do you think about the audience when making your work, or is there a different priority for you in making your films?
Lilli Carré: I do think a lot about the context in which I’m making a piece—the type of space it will be experienced in, or how it will be encountered. I really care about making work that can be accessed by anyone. The work I’m most interested in feels like it really considers its audience, while also somehow feeling like it was created without any idea of an audience at all.
T-Rav: Anything you’d like to say about the collection of work you’re planning to screen with us here in Richmond?
Lilli Carré: I’m really looking forward to seeing the shorts program they’ve put together and to the opportunity to share my body of work in the Byrd Theatre with the Richmond audience!
You always notice new things about your films when watching them in different kinds of spaces and with different groups, so I’m curious how they’ll feel and be received. All of my spare time over the past month has gone toward finishing a preliminary edit of my current film to include as a preview screening of some kind—we’ll see!
Dash: Lilli co-created Eyeworks with Alexander around 2010—they had a lineup that year, so that’s 14 years at least. They probably had some version of it even before 2010. But what an incredible thing to have going for so many years.
I think they were in Studio 23 in Richmond ten years ago, back in 2013. Lilli and Alexander lived in Chicago for many years and are now based in LA. These days, Eyeworks screens in Chicago, LA, and New York. It’s a traveling program and it’s always had a fantastic lineup that reflects their personalities and tastes.
We know how hard it is to get something like this off the ground—ours is just one day. They’ve been doing it for many years now and have built a very robust program. I saw the last one at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. You’d think in New York there would be tons of things like that all the time, but it’s really not true. Eyeworks is a very unique program.
Lilli teaches at CalArts and is very articulate about animation and her work. It’s a real gift to have her in Richmond. She knows a ton about animation. The comic side of her work reminds me of how Robert Beatty had his whole side career doing album covers.
Lilli has a lot of different things going on, and it’s just really cool to spotlight her animations in such a great venue. I’m sure she’ll have a lot of interesting things to say.
Zack: Kind of like last year with our guest Robert, I think the breadth of Lilli’s work has really contributed to the overall zeitgeist of design, independent art, and commercial art. You can see traces of her style everywhere.
Even though our event is the Richmond Animation Festival, our special guests open a window for the audience to think more broadly—about graphic design, about animation, about fine art. I just hope people leave feeling inspired.
T-Rav: For the evening—what time do doors open? What time is the short film screening? And what’s the projected end time for the after party at New York Deli?
Jordan: Doors open at 5 p.m., the shorts program starts at 5:30, and Lilli will begin her portion at 7 p.m. We’re guessing her program will run about an hour.
Dash: Maybe around 8:30, we’ll be on the rooftop of the New York Deli. That’s ideally a big part of the festival—where people can hang out, meet like-minded folks outside of the lobby at The Byrd. Get some drinks, talk about what you just saw. That should be the most fun part of the night.
Jordan: And Erin Kelly is also making a special cocktail for the evening.
Zack: It’s like a cel-animated cocktail.
Get tickets to Richmond Animation Festival HERE
The 2025 Short Animation Lineup
The Byrd Theatre
Sunday Night, April 27, 2025
$15
See the full lineup HERE
Neon Mud Bucket
Directed by David Daniels
3 min, 2012
Blue Fear
Directed by Lola Halifa-Legrand & Marie Jacotey
10 min, 2020
MIMT
Directed by Ted Wiggins
4 min, 2024
Make Me Psychic
Directed by Sally Cruikshank
8 min, 1978
Erodium Thunk
Directed by Winston Hacking
3 min, 2018
Evolution of a Red Star
Directed by Adam Beckett
7 min, 1973
Maurice’s Bar
Directed by Tzor Edery and Tom Prezman
15 min, 2023
Featured Guest: Lilli Carré
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