Lord and Miller Headline Presenters at GLAS Animation Festival

The GLAS Animation Festival has set its list of guest presenters for the 2018 event, set for March 22-25 in Berkeley, Calif.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the writers, directors and producers behind such hits as The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, will headline the GLAS Animation Festival 2018’s roster of guest presenters.

Other presenters at the festival, set for March 22-25 in Berkeley, Calif., include David OReilly, Réka Bucsi, Michael Frei, Ruth Lingford, Jonathan Hodgson, Boris Labbe, Sophie Koko Gate, Rachel Sale, Sawako Kabuki, SIGNALS and John Daker.

Here’s the festival-provided bios for the guests:

• Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the prolific writing and directing duo behind some of today’s most successful films including, The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie, 21 & 22 Jump Street and Cloudy with a Chance Of Meatballs. Known for their unique sensibilities, the pair’s projects have successfully drawn in audiences of all demographics having collectively earned over $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office. In 2015, Lord and Miller returned to their television roots as executive producers on the Fox comedy The Last Man on Earth. The duo also directed the first two episodes of the series, for which they received a Primetime Emmy nomination for outstanding directing for a comedy series. The duo is currently in various stages of production on several high profile film projects including writing the sequel to The LEGO Movie, as well as writing and executive producing the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. On the television side, they are in development on multiple projects, including the comedy The Escape, which received a put pilot commitment from ABC, and the single-camera comedy We Can Do Better, which they recently sold with significant penalty to ABC. Additionally, they are also developing the podcast phenomenon Serial for television.
• David OReilly (b. Ireland, 1985) is an artist working in the fields of design, animation and video games. Creator of the ground-breaking animated films Please Say Something and The External World, his film work has won numerous awards and been the subject of several retrospectives internationally. He has served as writer for the TV shows Adventure Time and South Park, and created the fictional video games in Spike Jonze’s Academy Award-winning film Her. In 2014, he released his first independent game Mountain, and followed it up with Everything in 2017. Everything won top prizes at A MAZE & Ars Electronica and was featured as game of the year by Wired, Polygon, AV Club and others. Its trailer became the first ever interactive project to qualify for an Academy Award.
• Réka Bucsi, born in 1988, is a Hungarian independent animation filmmaker. She received her BFA and MFA at the animation department of ​Moholy ­- ​Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest. Her films were screened at official shorts competitions at Berlinale, SXSW, Sundance and Annecy. Her graduation film Symphony No. 42, got shortlisted for the 87th Academy Awards. She was an artist in residence at the Open Workshop in Viborg, Denmark, and at Q21 in Vienna. Her short film Love was nominated for the European Film Awards 2017. Bucsi is represented as a director by Passion Pictures.
• Michael Frei is an artist currently based in Zürich. His films Not About Us and Plug & Play received numerous awards all over the world. He was invited to be Animation Artist in Residence Tokyo in 2014. In 2015, he completed his first game Plug & Play. He is now working on his upcoming project Kids. Frei will show his animated films and present some of his more recent projects such as Kids. He will talk about how he found himself making games.
• Ruth Lingford was born in London in 1953. After working as an occupational therapist in the fields of psychiatry and geriatrics, and having two children, she did an undergraduate course in fine art and art history at Middlesex University and earned a master’s degree in animation at the Royal College of Art. She has worked on documentaries and music videos and has made several short films. She taught at the Royal College of Art and the National Film and Television School and, since 2005, has taught animation in Harvard’s visual and environmental studies department. She lives in Boston and London.
• Jonathan Hodgson is an independent animator based in London. He studied at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. His short films have won many international awards, including a BAFTA for The Man with the Beautiful Eyes. He has worked on numerous advertising campaigns, music videos, features and documentaries including the ground-breaking drama-documentary-animation hybrid The Age of Stupid, and Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex, the first full-length animated documentary on British TV. He has lectured extensively in the U.K. and abroad and since 2008 has been course leader of the animation degree at Middlesex University. He continues to combine teaching with animated filmmaking.
• Born in 1987 in Lannemezan, Hautes Pyrénées, Boris Labbé lives and works between France and Madrid. After obtaining his national diploma in visual arts at the School of Art and Ceramics in Tarbes, he continues his studies at the EMCA of Angoulême. There he produced numerous projects, including Kyrielle, which was awarded the special jury’s prize for graduation films at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2012. Simultaneously, he developed his work as an artist and film director, and spent one year as artist member at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, Academy of France, in Spain. Afterwards, he began to collaborate with Sacrebleu Productions and directed the short films Rhizome (2015) and the upcoming project La Chute (2018).
• Originally from Bath, Sophie Koko Gate went on to study at the Royal College of Art and had international success with her graduation film Half Wet. Since then she has lectured at festivals and universities around the world and has settled in her London studio. From here she directs and produces content for clients like Google, MTV, Air Bnb, Lena Dunham and Harvard University. She also writes songs and creates the animated visuals for the musical freak John Daker.  Currently Sophie is working on two films to be released in 2018 and venturing into ceramics where she can bring her characters into the third dimension.
• Rachel Sale is an illustrator and aspiring filmmaker with a particular interest in telling stories that deal with the complexity of the modern world and its people. After five years of working in illustration and the elusive “scribing” industry, she decided to go back to art school and will soon complete her master’s degree in visual communication at the Royal College of Art. Rachel’s practice is ever evolving and she chooses not to stick to one particular style, but rather to select a considered stylistic approach to each of the projects she’s involved in. Having said this, there are consistent elements to her work: An underlying sense of optimism and good humour are ever present.
• Sawako Kabuki was born 1990 in Tokyo and graduated from the graphic design department at Tama Art University in 2013. After working at a porn video company, she completed a graduate school program. Her film has been selected and awarded in more than 20 countries and domestic including Annecy International Animation Festival, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and New Chitose Airport Festival. Kabuki is known for her distinct directorial personality. Her films include Summer’s Puke is Winter’s Delight, Master Blaster and Anal Juke.
• SIGNALS is a collaborative project by artists Nicolas Sassoon and Rick Silva. Sassoon and Silva share a broad and persistent theme in their practice -- the depiction and alteration of natural forms through computer technology. Rooted in this common interest, and produced by pairing complementary fields of research in computer imaging, SIGNALS focuses primarily on immersive audio-visual renderings of seascape environments. The project draws from scientific oceanic surveys, virtual reality and natural phenomena to generate video works, prints, sculptures and installations that reflect on environmental inquiries, concepts of monumentality, and alteration.
• John Daker is the musical child of four real-life intimate associates: frontwomen Sophie Koko Gate and Rachel Sale, backed by their m9s from Skillbard. An Arse Pop Love Band, two chicks sing about other chicks with the help of an unsavoury pixelated band member. Order yourself a large white wine, tuck in that tie and prepare to watch four of the softest attitudes in show business. John Daker will sing from its new EP Dubai Was Liiiiiit released on NAT RALE records ltd.

GLAS 2018 will be held March 22-25 in Berkeley, CA. With the event rapidly approaching, organizers will soon be announcing competition selections, curated programs, special guests, and the complete festival schedule. In the meantime, passes for GLAS Animation Festival 2018 are now on sale!

• GLAS Festival Pass -- Attend all four days of and have access to all GLAS events with the Festival pass including all screenings, panels, workshops, installations, guest lectures, and parties!
• Weekend Pass -- Planning on coming on Saturday and Sunday only? Don’t worry. There is a weekend pass just for you.
• ASIFA – Members -- GLAS offers special pass discounts to ASIFA members and students. If you’re an ASIFA member you can enjoy 15% off festival passes.
• Students -- GLAS Animation Festival Passes are available to students for 25% off the original price.
• Bringing a group? Whether you’re an group of students, a team of friends, or office mates, GLAS offers a special 25% off festival passes for groups of five or more.

Visit the GLAS Animation website for more information about the festival, programs, and registration.

Source: GLAS Animation Festival 

Tom McLean has been writing for years about animation from a secret base in Los Angeles.