ASIFA East Festival Updates
Hello, this is Tristian Goik, the new president of ASIFA-East. Our annual animation film festival has been postponed due to the COVID-19 epidemic and “New York on PAUSE.” This is our safest course of action, due to the dramatic disruption in our lives. Many people face new struggles: learning how to work from home, registering for unemployment, balancing full time homeschooling, and taking care of elderly or ill relatives. Even though we just celebrated our 50th anniversary, it seemed easier to put ASIFA-East on “pause” as well. If your membership expired recently, you will continue to receive our newsletter at this time. Almost all of our activities rely on the cooperation of our volunteer members, and our greatest strengths lie ‘in real life’ contact, so with regret we cancel our plans and look towards the future.
Our goal after quarantine is to pick up where we left off and hold our awards ceremony in May 2021. We are investigating best practices for our jury screenings. If possible, we would like to hold virtual screenings, which could be greatly benefited by shared-document ballot voting, and would open up accessibility to more of our members outside of Manhattan. But, as you may have personally experienced during “stay-at-home,” watching video with a bunch of friends online is not exactly the best “premiere” quality experience at this time. So we are hoping that by the fall of 2020 there will be opportunities to hold our regular jury screenings (with the added benefit of chatting in person) and will hold virtual screenings as a back up.
ASIFA East – Community Gathering
We want to hear from YOU. ASIFA-East has a Slack channel readily available (see link below) for people to discuss new ideas, as well as our regular Facebook and Instagram. Right now our figure drawing sessions are on hold as well, although that has not stopped several animators from organizing their own virtual drawing sessions. If you need suggestions for where to draw, or want to share your group, let us know!
Despite the state of emergency we find ourselves in, there are so many wonderful and new creative things happening all around us. There are performances on live social media popping up in unexpected ways. And many of our industry friends are struggling to keep their own shows going, so it’s our responsibility to help them! Some of the great new animation virtual events that have turned up are Picture This! (an animation comedy show held every Saturday, the NY Int’l Children’s Film Fest’s Virtual Cinema, and the Tommy Stathes Cartoon Carnival (featuring “reel” 16mm film)! Several universities are holding virtual graduation thesis screenings. All of these and more should be shared on our Facebook, which is a great community gathering for animators. And stay tuned for news about an ASIFA “Netflix Party,” which would be great either for families with kids (please let us know what’s a good time for kids to watch a movie…) or for a late night movie drinking game!
Email suggestions and more to asifaeastpresident@gmail.com
ASIFA East – Call for Submissions
The Viewseum is a periodic column started by Emmett Goodman that briefly introduces a member of our chapter to the world. We would like to highlight a specific new film, animator, graduate or studio! If you would like to recommend someone (or yourself!) please supply us with a nice portrait photo, link to video, website, brief bio/history of your animation career, alerts to any upcoming news, and recommendations to cool animation past and present! We want to learn more about our wonderful members.
I am also taking submissions for the 4th annual Queer Animation showcase, although the exact date and location are TBD.
Stay safe, wash your hands, maintain social distancing. Send us photos of your creative masks, we know you’re an artist! We look forward to seeing you again in the future.
