BFA Animation

Ella Cesari gives a whole new meaning to the term “slam poet” with a film by the same name that follows Antonia, a mellow spoken word poet with a secret: She’s also notorious pro wrestler Acetoni. Her two lives never intersect—until she accidentally double-books one night! Documentary and animation come together in the hybrid short SHOTS, by Zoe Lyttle, using clips from over 30 hours of interviews focused on the experience of living with chronic illness and disability within the United States. The film digs into body dysmorphia and the struggle of finding and affording care and medication. In Rose Kang’s touching film Junk, a girl’s visit to her mother's home turns surreal when they get swept into a junk realm and must resolve their long standing relationship issues, including the mother’s hoarding. (Kang is also a 2021 Alumni Scholarship award winner.) And make sure to bring your tissues for Jii-chan, by Joie Lim, about an imaginative little girl who mistakes her dying grandfather for an astronaut.

MFA Computer Arts

PANIK! (Torschlusspanik), by Daiqi Cu, is an interactive animated short film that mixes 2D and 3D styles, inspired by stories of endless deadlines and goals, and feelings of anxiety and panic—a timely subject, to be sure. In Blip we get a parallel theme, as creator Hannah Sun explores the side effects of our global digital addiction. And Chloe Xiangyu Shi’s The Name of the Plum Blossom, mixed materials are used to tell the story of the ways the artist’s mother, a tailor and a remarried woman in 1980s China, have affected her as a woman today.

These are just a few of the many projects to come from these three SVA programs, whose graduates go on to create for major animation studios, design firms or their own fine-art practices. We can’t wait to show you the full films when they are complete—watch this space!

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