Beginning today, six eclectic animated shorts from the 14th edition of the National Film Board of Canada's Hothouse program for emerging animators are available online worldwide at nfb.ca and on the NFB app.
Just prior to the online launch, all six animators were in attendance at Montreal's prestigious Sommets du cinéma d'animation for the festival premiere of their films.
The 14th season of Hothouse features the work of talented emerging animation filmmakers from across Canada:
- Amma by Akash Jones, a Bengali-Jamaican Toronto animator;
- The Last Tango by Mochi Lin, a Chinese-born filmmaker now based in Montreal;
- My World, Your Melody by Costa Rican-Canadian artist Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, from Montreal;
- Not Enough Womb for the Two of Us by Cameron Kletke, born in Calgary and now based in Vancouver;
- Red Star Alley by Jenny Yujia Shi, a Beijing-born Halifax animator;
- Unblending by Michelle Ku, a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker born in Calgary.
There were a record 401 applications to fill the program's six spots-a testament to the strength of Canadian animation and the popularity of Hothouse, now in its 20th year.
The theme for this year's Hothouse is "Small Things Considered," which filmmakers were free to use as inspiration to create innovative one- to two-minute animated shorts.
Hothouse 14 is led by NFB animation producer Maral Mohammadian; associate producer Anne Koizumi, a Calgary-born, Montreal-based animator who is an alumnus of the 2006 edition of Hothouse; and mentoring director Andrea Dorfman, an award-winning Halifax filmmaker, artist, writer, animator and illustrator.
From Halifax
Red Star Alley by Jenny Yujia Shi
