GLAS Festival Announces International Jury, Henry Selick, and Installations (Exclusive)

The United States is about to get something that it hasn’t had in many years: a world-class international animation festival. GLAS Animation Festival, set to take place March 3-6, 2016 in Berkeley, California, will offer a full slate of competition programs, retrospectives, installations, and international guests.

This morning, the festival announced its international jury, comprised of a dozen artists, filmmakers, curators, and industry professionals. The majority of the jury members will also be presenting programs of work at the festival.

The jury includes a high-profile group of independent filmmakers, including Jeremy Clapin (Skhizein), Hisko Hulsing (Junkyard, Cobain: Montage of Heck), Kirsten Lepore (Move Mountain), and Tom Brown (Teeth). They’ll be joined by other prominent figures such as Newgrounds founder Tom Fulp, PBS senior director of children’s programming Linda Simensky, and Holland Animation Film Festival director Gerben Schermer. The full list of jury members is below:

Narrative + Graduate Jury

• Jeremy Clapin (France)
• Hisko Hulsing (The Netherlands)
• Kirsten Lepore (United States)

Non-Narrative + Undergraduate + Commissioned Jury

• Nobuaki Doi (Japan)
• Sara Gunnarsdottir (Iceland)
• Gerben Schermer (The Netherlands)

Children’s Jury

• Rachel Ho (Singapore)
• Brooke Keesling (United States)
• Linda Simensky (United States)

US Jury

• Tom Brown (United Kingdom)
• Tom Fulp (United States)
• Peter Millard ((United Kingdom)

In addition to the jury announcements, GLAS confirmed today that Henry Selick will be a headlining guest at the festival. The director of Coraline and The Nightmare Before Chirstmas will present and discuss some of his lesser-known earlier works including Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions.

GLAS will also incorporate installations into its programming line-up. It announced four installation projects today:

• “Clock 02” by Paul Vester: A hand-drawn clock animation installation that measures the passing of time by counting forward with cycles of random lengths.
• Calvin Frederik: Calvin installs an array of custom-built lights within a gallery/window space. These lights will include some select sculptures from his short, animated film, Agrabagrabah. Constructed from Christmas light strands, pvc pipes, and metal enclosures, the lights will be sequenced to flash rhythmically through a long loop of animated patterns.
• “Ghost” by Rachel Ho: Sitting at the back of the theater, always cemented to the same seat, first to arrive and last to leave – is the figure that unwittingly enters the mythology of the festival experience. We become what we make. The Ghost can be found in situ and will be present for all festival screenings. Please follow closely.
• “Antipots” by Caleb Wood: Anipots is a ceramics and animation hybrid project, combining the process of throwing and the forms that vessels take on with zoetrope based animation techniques.

For more information about the festival’s programs and obtaining passes, visit the GLAS festival website.