Dive into the vibrant world of animation at the 2nd Annual Richmond Animation Festival, set to captivate audiences at The Byrd Theater on April 28th. This year’s festival promises an eclectic mix of short films, showcasing talents from around the globe, including a special program by Robert Beatty.
Festival organizers Jordan Bruner, Zack Williams, and Dash Shaw have curated an experience that’s not just about watching films but engaging Richmond’s growing animation community.
Whether you’re an animation aficionado or new to the scene, this festival offers a unique window into the art form’s dynamic and evolving landscape.
2nd Annual Richmond Animation Festival
Sunday, April 28th, 2024
5:30 pm – 10:00 pm
The Byrd Theater
5:30 pm Short Film Program
Attila directed by Bruce Bickford, 1980s
Donks by Felix Colgrave, 2023
La Chute directed by Boris Labbé, 2018
The Moth directed by Allison Schulnik, 2019
Terra Incognita directed by Pernille Kjaer and Adrian Dexter, 2021
Matta and Matto directed by Kerstin Zemp, Bianca Caderas, 2023
Now That I’m Thinking, directed by David Gelfand, 2023
Tennis, Oranges directed Sean Pecknold, 2024
The Miracle directed by Nienke Duetz, 2023
The Landscape directed by Rachel Maves, 2023 will be playing during intermission and she designed the poster!
7:30pm Robert Beatty Animation Program
Q&A with Robert Beatty
Todd Raviotta: When did the planning begin for this festival? When did all that start?
Zack Williams: Jordan, you programmed that show back in New York in the fall or spring 2019? And then we moved here Halloween 2019 with the intention of us trying to program animated things. Then COVID happened, and we brought it up to Dash. And Dash was like, ”Let’s just do it.” And through his contacts at The Byrd, that made it go a lot quicker.
Jordan Bruner: It was probably like summer 2022 was when the three of us started to talk about it.
TR: What was one of your favorite memories of the first festival last year? For me, I really enjoyed getting to see more of Martha Colburn’s work again. I had a great fortune at the James River Film Festival years ago to have lunch with her and Ray Harryhausen. It was nice to see her work again at The Byrd and to remember all that. What were some of your highlights from last year’s festival?
JB: I was just going to say that’s where I first was introduced to Martha Coburn’s work and met her at that festival. So it was important to show one of her pieces at the festival we had last year.
ZW: Coincidentally, Jordan and I both worked for Martha for a while, showing one of her movies was like some of our very early inspiration. So it was cool to bring that to the festival.
JB: In terms of memories, having such a great turnout at the Byrd Theater, it felt like such a fun, magical night and seeing Dash’s film [Cryptozoo] on the big screen was really amazing. I had seen Dash’s and Jane’s film from before, but seeing it in the theater was really incredible.
ZW: I think one of the main reasons for wanting to do this is getting to inspire people who aren’t exposed to this kind of work and at the afterparty, I talked to a lot of people who were in VCU or just out of school, and they were really excited to see stuff off the beaten path. I talked to one guy who told me he was a dude who does HVAC and had never seen a Q&A before in his life. And I kind of feel like this is who this is for. Bringing this film festival culture to Richmond.
Dash Shaw: The first year was sort of an experiment to see who would show up. The Byrd is so enormous that even when you have hundreds of people, it doesn’t feel like a full crowd. You have to be aware of comparing it to the size of the theater to get a sense of how many people came. But the good turnout was encouraging, especially because it was year one. I hope that in year two more people hear about it. This year we’re able to bring a special guest Robert Beatty, whereas last year it was Cryptozoo because I was here and available.
TR: With the short film program for this year and its curation, what are some of the styles or genres?
JB: It’s a mix of films mostly made in the past four-ish years, a mix of stop motion, 3D, hand-painted cel 2D animation. It kind of runs the gamut of different techniques. There’s one film in the program that’s a stop motion film where all of the drawings are printed on plexiglass and it’s a really, really cool technique that I’m really excited to see on the big screen.
ZW: There’s also one movie that isn’t contemporary that we’re going to start the program off with. It is a short pencil on paper animation from Bruce Bickford, who is one of my heroes. And again, like showing Martha’s movie last year, it’s something that was very inspiring to me. We’re going to kick off the program with that and then go into more contemporary stuff.
TR: When doing this sort of playlist curation of a night of work, it does become an educational environment as well to go through a lot of varieties of techniques and eras. I am looking forward to it immensely because it’s always nice to get inspiration and confirmation of different experiments to see and light the fire. With Robert Beatty how did the invitation go out to them and what can we look forward to seeing in their part of the presentation?
DS: I’ve known him for many years through alternative comic books. He did the title sequence of Cryptozoo where the title scrolls by. I called him because I knew that he had a big body of short films. He’s only done a program like this a couple of times before. Once at Anthology Film Archives years ago. Maybe people know who he is mainly through his album covers, but this is, I think, an equally exciting world of his. So it’s pretty cool to have such a unique screening in Richmond, Virginia.
TR: I’m excited to see his work and this retrospective opportunity. And you’re going to have an interview artist talk with them at the conclusion of their collection of work?
DS: Yeah they’ll be here so let’s do a good Q&A. There aren’t a lot of those in Richmond and the point is that he’s here and the audience can ask him questions about anything. I’ll ask him some questions and it’ll be great.
TR: Is there any work in the short film collection from Virginia artists or Richmond artists?
ZW: It’s pretty international, a lot of stuff from Europe, from the States. Trying to think if there’s any South American…
DS: Rachel does have a piece.
JB: Rachel Maves designed our poster. She is local. She made a really cool, long looping landscape animation that is sort of more ambient. We’re playing that during the intermission. So we’ll have her work represented in the program.
ZW: With Rachel doing the poster, it kind of like setting the art direction for the branding of the festival. Every year we definitely want to work with as we continue to do this, we want to work with another Richmond graphic designer illustrator who might also dabble in the animation world.
TR: Excellent. What was with the international selection for the short film program, what was the methodology for inclusion or is it just even as simple as you wanted to see it on the big screen yourself?
ZW: It’s definitely some of that. I feel like it’s really a combination of me and Jordan’s tastes.
JB: Yeah, I think it’s like you said, things that we’ve seen or animators that we follow and whose work we really love and things that we want to see here on the big screen.
ZW: It’s things that I think other people would be into that maybe we don’t feel like are on people’s radar. This is kind of a buried niche part of the film world. For instance, the one film you’re talking about, the plexiglass, The Miracle, that director Nienke Deutz, she had one short that I’d seen at festivals, and over the years that I watched online a bunch of times. And then Jordan was like, “Why don’t we show that?” And then went and looked it up and she had her second short and it was a surprise. “Let’s show that.”
TR: For each of you personally being animators and having seen each of your work, which is all amazing and stunning, when did you find out that you were an animator, and that you would pursue it to make motion pictures?
JB: My mom is an artist and I had a desk in her studio and had access to her art supplies when I was a kid. So when I was younger, I was more interested in painting and drawing. But when I went to college, I got more interested in filmmaking and took an animation class with the Kinetic Imaging department and fell in love with it. And then I think after taking that workshop with Martha Colburn, with the James River Film Festival, I got really, really excited about animation and like more experimental techniques, things like that. So I think it was a synthesis of being exposed to art from a young age and learning being exposed to animation in college.
ZW: I’m from New Jersey, I grew up there and my mom was an art teacher. And so there were art books in the house and there was a lot of community theater, you know, local arts stuff that I was exposed to at an early age. And part of that was a film festival that had some independent animators come from New York and do a show, very much like the one that we’re putting on. Despite growing up close to New York, I didn’t know anybody from there or who left to go there. It’s really because of that one film festival, I kind of ended up there and trying to pursue animation.
DS: Comics and cartoons were connected growing up. There would be the X-Men comic book and the X-Men cartoon on TV and Akira and all of these things that were both comics and cartoons that I loved. But the animation part of it seemed really impossible. I thought you’d have to move to L.A. or have a million dollars. Then when I was in college, it was when early computer animation on the Internet was getting popular, like Flash animations. I didn’t really like the way it looked, but I was still like,”Wow! One person made that”, and the GIF function in Photoshop was where I saw I could scan things and just hit play. I started making very, very short cartoons from that. And then loving Jane [Samborski] and Jane is a more traditionally trained animator. It started with me roping her into trying to make projects, and she gradually took over more and more of it. And now she runs the production.
TR: Everybody kind of mentioned the importance of when you started to see that you could do it, are those ideas of workshops and skill shares and the collaborative process, do you have a vision or hope down the road to incorporate workshops to a festival portion of that?
JB: I would love to do something like that, Yeah, actually, yeah.
ZW: Either workshops or maybe doing some kind of screening specific to local work or, teenagers or younger people making this stuff and giving them a place to kind of get together around it.
JB: I don’t want to speak for everybody, but yeah, maybe trying to make it like a two day event or something, having a little bit more programming in the future.
ZW: Every year we’re going to try to add something. And I think this being the second year, it’s going to kind of be a litmus test of how we can grow and like what people respond to. So yeah, it’s kind of a wait and see at this point. It’s really fun putting this together and trying to get people excited.
TR: And you have said even going back to last year how important it is, to bring these different groups together and have that networking overlap with inspiration, sharing for the audience and in yourselves. What is the hope for that aspect of the festival and the after party? Is that next door as well this year?
DS: That will be at the New York Deli.
JB: I’m going to get back in touch with them early April. They’ve offered us the rooftop this year. So that would be pretty sweet.
ZW: The afterparty, I think that’s kind of like almost as important to us as the festival, where the people who are into this can meet each other and I think with everything being so online these days, the idea of having an in-person anything is almost kind of strange. So I think it’s especially when you want to connect with local people in Richmond to have a hub for people to meet.
DS: Ideally people tell us what they want. If enough people show up that it can be two days, then great. But if a bunch of younger people seem like they want to learn how to make animations and they show up, then we can talk about the workshops. But figuring out what people are into and how many people are excited? What kind of people are excited? Who out there cares? That’s important to listen to.
ZW: It is. It is definitely an adult program.
TR: I was going to ask if there is anything around the program of the short films or the featured guest work that that audience and interested people should be aware of? It isn’t the Saturday morning, Sunday morning cartoon fare, it is for mature audiences?
ZW: Yeah I would say it’s definitely maybe a PG-13, you know, like definitely sex and violence. And some difficult subject matter too. So I would say definitely like a high school and up crowd.
TR: Are there any sponsorships that have been provided that’s key to note in the ways that different organizations may have helped?
ZW: It all kind of comes down to dollars. It’s going to pay for Robert’s hotel and screening fees. Also paying the artists to make the poster. Last year it was definitely a little more DIY and we put some money into it ourselves. This year we reached out to four local production companies and then one international one. Our sponsors are Mondial, SuperJoy, Hue and Cry, Cream Studio, and Partizan.
TR: With that generous support of the sponsors for the artists licensing and accommodations, all those fundamental things that grow a festival to be a rewarding experience for those that are sharing their work with us. I’m thrilled that you all were able to take that step because that’s always one of the most difficult things as an artist is to get that funding and support and then to be someone that wants to share other people’s art, to have the funding and support to do that, to parlay that to the participants is amazing. Congratulations on the first year, the second year and what may come from here. Before we close out, is there anything else that you guys would like to add on this year’s program or the event?
DS: l saw the first year program for the first time that day, because I’m not part of curating the shorts. It was awesome and it was such a great selection. I haven’t seen this year yet, but I’m very excited. I’ve seen tons of short film programs all over the world. I can guarantee it will be better than the Academy Awards short film of any year. Jordan and Zack have their own tastes that are different from other animation festivals. So I think it’s a really good mix of funny things and experimental things. And those two combined with the great asset of the theater, which is one of I think one of the best theaters in the world, it’s so beautiful.
ZW: Like Dash is saying. In addition to the sponsors, working with The Byrd. They were really game they’re helping us distribute the finances and stuff for the screenings. They’re really a very essential piece of this puzzle.
TR: Fantastic. Well, I will turn up and be thrilled to see what ya’ll have put together in both programs. And look forward to connecting again in person, much needed in these times.
DS: Richmond has got a good run, it’s the Studio Ghibli Fest to the James River Film Festival to the Richmond Animation Fest to Bubbles Con. So that’s a great month of activities.
TR: I am glad for it, we’re into the spring season to enjoy getting to see this work on the big screen. May everyone return to their own studios and make the next phases in all your work because I want to see that, whatever you all are working on. I am making the assumption you all are working on stuff, I want to see that. What’s the best way to follow for more information on the festival or your individual works. Any handles?
DS: The Richmond Animation Festival Instagram is the best it is @richmondanimationfest. We are @jordanbruneryesplease @drzakko and @dash_shaw
TR: Appreciate and thank you all.
