DIRK HENROTAY

GEERT VAN GOETHEM

Geert Van Goethem is producer and director, specialising in animation films. He teaches Production, Production Management and Project Development at the Brussels based Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS), and Film Analysis at LUCA School of Arts Campus C-mine in Genk (B). In 1987 he was co-founder of the Brussels based multidisciplinary production centre for the arts S.O.I.L. (Sight Of an Ignored Landscape), where he still is artistic director. Over the years this organisation became a leading independent production centre for the arts in Belgium. Many of its productions were internationally awarded. In 2005 Geert was nominated for the prestigious Flanders Culture Award. He was a member of the General Assembly of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), and the General Assembly of the Institute for Visual and Audiovisual Arts (BAM) in Brussels. He also was a member of the jury at several international film festivals.

 

SHAUNI DE GUSSEM

Shauni De Gussem is a professional screenwriter and story doctor. She has written for live action and animated films, television series, and documentaries, such as Interstellar Ella, internationally co-produced by Fabrique Fantastique (Belgium), Aardman Animations (UK), and Apartment 11 (Canada). Shauni is also an artistic researcher at Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) School of Arts Brussels on film and autotheory, focusing on the topics of the female gaze, visual representations of absence, and the cinematic apparatus as an apparatus of witnessing. She also writes essays on and gives talks about film, visual and narrative culture, autotheory, creative writing, film and psychoanalysis, and film and continental philosophy for various publications, initiatives and international conferences, both in Dutch and in English. At LUCA School of Arts she teaches Screenwriting, Film Analysis and Narrative Research.

 

STEVEN MALLIET

Steven Malliet is a researcher and artist in digital media, music and game design. He teaches Art Based Research, Web Design, Game Design and (Digital) Media Theory. He has a strong international teaching experience, as a guest lecturer at among others the University of North Dakota, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Tampere University and Aalto University, and as speaker at several international festivals and conferences, including South-By-Southwest. He is the co-editor of two international books on media culture: Moral Issues in Digital Game Play (ACCO, 2012) and The Borders of Subculture (Routledge, 2015). He was, among others, supervisor of the Seeing Sound project, which is still ongoing as a course module at LUCA School of Arts (www.seeingsound.be). His art, which mainly relates to music (videos) can be found at www.slowbear.be.

 

TOON LOENDERS

Toon Loenders is an acclaimed animation film artist, well-known for his Stop Motions in television programs. His company, KLADARADATSCH!, made feature films in co production with different countries. Oscar winning film ‘Karakter’ was one. Awards and nominations were given for his commissioned films ‘Rechargeable Nick’ (at the Académie International des Images de Synthese Brussel), ‘A fond’ (1st prize at Festival Européen de L’Image) and ‘Biodiversity’ (European Excellence Award). Toon currently makes his own independent films and television series with a new company SLAMMER! Productions. ‘Exitus’, combining animation and urban exploring, was on screen on several television channels across Europe. In 2017 he co-directs ‘THE ORIGIN OF SOUND’, a short film with famous animation filmer Paul Driesen, and is finishing in 2019 ‘Prospero’ a short film in Pixilation and Stop Motion techniques. Toon teaches Stop Motion, (Animation) Film Styling, and Art-Based Research at LUCA School of Arts. www.toonloenders.com

 

Virgilio Vasconcelos

Virgilio Vasconcelos is a researcher and animator at LUCA School of Arts, Campus C-mine in Genk. He has a PhD in Arts from UFMG (Brazil), and was a professor at that institution for 10 years, where he taught 3D and digital 2D animation, supervised students and performed research on animation theory and practice. At LUCA, he coordinates the research cluster “Critical Reflections of and through animation”, investigating topics of Decoloniality and how its matrix of power (including but not limited to race, gender and knowledge) relates to animation. He also has large experience in using Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) for animation, having published a book about character animation and rigging with Blender in 2011. virgiliovasconcelos.net

 

MIKA KARHU

Karhu is visual artist, researcher, curator, and university lecturer, (PhD.) His area of study in animation teaching is drawing techniques, theory, and philosophy of experience. As an artist his core area is to showcase the communicativeness of art: with the help of art, we can reflect on how we develop a fairer and more equal society. Karhu has held more than 30 solo exhibitions and participated in more than a hundred joint exhibitions at home and abroad. His works are in numerous Finnish and international collections, and he has been awarded numerous awards and scholarships over the years.

 

PIETARI KOSKINEN

Pietari Koskinen has been a sound designer, sound recordist, sound editor and sound mixer for over 30 years. Since 2010 he has also been Professor of Film Sound Design in the Department of Film and Television, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University. Koskinen has worked as a sound designer on numerous feature and documentary films, short films, TV series and animations. He is also the scriptwriter and director of 8 animated films. He continues his artistic practice as a film sound designer alongside his academic teaching.

 

TANJA BASTAMOW

Tanja Bastamow is digital artist who has been working as a freelancer in virtual set design, 3D animation and post production for virtual & augmented reality, film, television and experimental games since 2000. In addition to this, she has a long career in teaching digital design methods as a full-time lecturer as well as a part-time teacher. Her key areas of interest are immersive virtual environments, finding new visual styles in digital expression, how new technology affects visual storytelling, and integrating digital tools with analogue working methods. She is currently studying for PhD, doing research on the performative and aesthetic possibilities of real-time virtual scenography.

 

TERHI VÄÄNÄNEN

Väänänen is the CEO and co-founder of Pyjama Films, a Finland-based production company specialised in high-end 2D animation. Terhi is in charge of the studio’s IP development and partnerships, and makes sure Pyjama sticks to its editorial line of creating stereotype breaking contents. Terhi has MAs in Media Culture and Arts Management. Having worked previously as a festival director, she has close connections to the Finnish animation talent and is dedicated to bringing their best concepts to the global audience.

 

TUULA LEINONEN

Executive in Residence Tuula Leinonen is animation director, teacher and researcher, who also has a long career in managing animation networking and developing projects with organisations from both private and public sector in Finland. She currently works as an executive in residence, who is responsible for teaching, research and curriculum of the Master’s programme in Animation at the Aalto University. In addition, she has directed several short films since 1990 and is the author of the comprehensive book 100 vuotta suomalaista animaatiota (100 years of Finnish Animation). She has curated several animation screenings and organised the international Animatricks Animation Film Festival as a board member for many years.

DAVID NOVACK

With degrees in engineering and music, David Novack is an award-winning sound designer and re-recording mixer for dozens of films. Highlights include Todd Haynes’ 

Velvet Goldmine, Larry Clark’s Kids, Whit Stillman’s Last Days of Disco, and Richard LaGravenese’s Living Out Loud. In theater, David designed sound for an opera by Roger Waters (Ça Ira) and sound/projections for a production of the Papp Theater’s presentation of Death of a Salesman in Yiddish. David is currently designing sound for a science-in-art installation, Space Messengers, exhibited in Portugal and the US, and is developing another for the CERN particle accelerator campus in Switzerland. As a filmmaker, David has several widely-released documentaries honoured with many awards including the Int’l Doc Assn’s Pare Lorentz Award for social documentary film. A former lecturer at Univ. of Pennsylvania, David now teaches and researches sound and cinema at Lusófona University for Humanities and Technology in Lisbon.

 

FILIPE COSTA LUZ

With a PhD thesis in Animation field (Communication Sciences) by the New University of Lisbon, Filipe Costa Luz coordinates Videogames Ba and is vice-chair of Communication Design Ba at University Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias.
He lectures digital post-production for film, television, games and animation and also does research activities in projects of communication science, Design and arts. His work at Hei-Lab (Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab) and MovLab (Laboratory of Interactions and Interfaces), where he integrates technologies such as Motion Capture, Animation, VR or Stereoscopic Photography, it’s an example of the cross-media projects that evolve him in academic or professional work for the entertainment, design or communication area.

 

JOÃO MIGUEL REAL

João Miguel Real is an award-winning Animation Film Director working in animation for the last 15 years in several animation studios. With a degree in Engineering, he has taken the path of animation, as an animator, compositor, and film director and his expertise has enabled him to work with different animation techniques as Stop Motion, 2D Digital Animation and 3D. Today he is Producer and Director of Easylab Animation Studio, where he researches new approaches in animation techniques. He’s been also Invited Assistant Professor at Lusófona University for the last 7 years in the Digital Animation Degree while enrolled in his final year as Phd student in Media Arts. Currently, he is Co-coordinator of REANIMA, European Joint-Master in Animation and member of the development committee of FilmEU, European Universities Alliance for Film and Media Arts.

 

JOSÉ MIGUEL RIBEIRO

José Miguel Ribeiro studied Fine Arts at the School of Belas-Artes in Lisbon and started working as an animator in 1990. In 1999 he did A Suspeita, short animated stopmotion film with which he was awarded 26 international awards, highlighting the Cartoon d’Or in 2000. In 2004, he made a cartoon series of 1.40 minutes Home Things that consists of 26 episodes, where the protagonists are the things that are in a house: the mop, the toothbrush, the glasses, the vacuum cleaner etc. The series was honored with several international awards. In 2017, he won the prize for best animated documentary Fragments in Clermont-Ferrand. In 2022 he directed his first animated feature film Nayola.

 

LEA VIDAKOVIC

Lea Vidakovic is a multimedia artist, who works in the field of animated installations, expanded media practices and traditional puppet animation. She holds a BA/MA as graphic artist and painter (Academy of Arts, Zagreb); BA in animation (HVO, Norway); MA of audio-visual arts (Royal Academy of Art, Belgium) and a PhD in animation studies (NTU/ADM Singapore). Her research interests include fragmented narratives and new storytelling approaches for animated installations, expanded cinema and storytelling. She has exhibited internationally on numerous solo and group exhibitions, on more than 200 animation festivals, and is a winner of several art and film awards. She took part in several art residencies, conferences and animation festivals as a selector and jury member. She teaches at Lusofona university.

 

MANUEL JOSÉ DAMÁSIO

Manuel is a full professor and the head of the film and media art department at Lusófona University. He obtained his tenure in 2011 from Minho University in Portugal and holds a PhD in media studies from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He has worked as a trainer, consultant and producer in the audiovisual industry at a European and international level for more than twenty years and has a strong past experience as head researcher and project manager in several national and European research and development projects.

 

NATALIE WOOLF

Natalie Woolf holds a PhD in Design Products from the Royal College of Art, and a BA in Fine Arts/Painting from Leeds Beckett University. She has worked on a number of animation projects including art direction for the animation film The Eyes of the Lighthouse (2011), more recently completing a series of animation installations on the theme of spatial anxieties exhibited in the UK, and Portugal. Since 2015 Natalie has taught drawing for the Animation Studies BA and Hybrid Spaces Animation Arts MA; is the Curator of the Drawing courses for DELLI – Design Lusófona, Lisbon.  Main topics of interest and research are: animated material responsiveness to human presence and spatially distributed drawing. She is particularly interested in still and moving image drawing and how it is mediated by and/or delivered through technologies. Natalie is active in academic research, integrated in the Centre for Other Worlds (COW), Lusófona University, and continues her own creative practice at Atelier Concorde.

 

PAULO VIVEIROS

Paulo Viveiros holds a PhD in Film Studies and a MA in Video Art both from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is an Associate Professor and the Head of the MA in Animation Arts and the Graduation Course in Digital Animation both at Universidade Lusófona. He is a member of the R&D research unit CICANT – Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture and New Technologies. He is also a jury member of the Portuguese Film Institute (ICA) for animation public competitions for financial support.

 

PEDRO SERRAZINA

Pedro Serrazina is an award-winning director, senior lecturer, animation researcher and artistic director of Cinanima Festival. His first short, the multi-prized Tale about the Cat and the Moon, was premiered at Cannes and is still regularly screened in retrospectives. Serrazina’s work ranges from short films and site-specific installations to music videos and academic projects. He is interested in the interconnections between architecture, public space and animation, completed his MA at the Royal College of Art, London, and a practice-based PhD at Univ. Lusófona, Lisbon, where he teaches. His international work includes a United Nations commissioned project developed with the local community in Tunis, using animation to address the theme of local empowerment in Tunisia. A member of the Society for Animation Studies and co-organizer of Ecstatic Truth, annual symposium on animation and documentary practices, Serrazina is currently preparing his next film, What remains of us.