This Week in Manhattan: Animation Nights New York Best of Fest

New York City has a new mini-animation festival. Animation Nights New York (ANNY), a monthly animation screening series in New York City, will celebrate its first anniversary this week by launching a full two-day animation festival packed with screenings, panels, vr experiences, installations, and other events.

The ANNY Best of Fest will take place this Thursday and Friday, September 29-30, at 180 Maiden Lane in Manhattan’s Seaport District. Like the successful screening series that inspired the festival, films will play a prominent role in the event. A panel of guest judges—Emily Hubley, Anthony Haden-Guest and Leah Shore—have programmed a special screening of 20 ‘best of’ films from over 200 shorts that have screened at the monthly screening events over the past year. Watch the trailer for the ‘best of’ screening below:

In addition, ANNY Best of Fest will offer other animation screenings of both shorts and features, as well as panels and talks focused around technology and story in animation (Framestore, Aardman Nathan Love, Mark Osborne, Michael Ferraro, Tom Snyder, Flickerlab), animation in reporting (TED-Ed, New York Times Op-Docs), animation as outreach (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hey Mister!, Mythic Bridge, The Animation Project), virtual reality (Revrie Immersive Works, Framestore, Aardman Nathan Love), animation distribution (John Andrucci, InDemand, Batterypop, Vuier, Bidslate, Vivicast), crowdfunding (Seed & Spark), voice-over acting (IGDA), and storyboarding (Blue Sky Studios, Outlander), among other topics.

An exhibit of animation art, “Art in Motion,” curated by Anderson Contemporary, will including animation drawings, cels, videos, paintings, and sculpture by the following artists and filmmakers: Nin Brudermann, Anthony Haden-Guest, Emily Hubley, Jeff Scher, Jaime Ekkens, Dustin Grella, Signe Baumane, Bill Plympton, Cagil Harmandar, Cem Kurtulus, Fluidtoons, Jake Nelson, M. Henry Jones, and Marco Brambilla.

A full schedule of events can be found here. Tickets for the two-day event range from free to just $30 for full access to all events. To purchase tickets and additional info, visit the main ANNY website.

(Photo: Ellen Qbertplaya)