August 21st, 2023 
Jerry Beck 
ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Educators Forum (AEF) is proud to announce the six recipients of this year’s AEF Faculty Grants program. This year’s recipients were selected from a pool of creative, talented artists and filmmakers from across the United States. Applications for this year’s grants were received from educators from Australia, Canada, the West Indies, Wales and the United States.
AEF Faculty Grants are designed to provide support for individuals or groups with reasonable expenditures associated with research, scholarly activity or creative projects in the field of animation. Grants are open to both full- and part-time faculty at accredited post-secondary institutions.
The AEF Selection Committee was very pleased with the high quality and diversity of the proposals this year, and hopes faculty continue to apply again next year.
In alphabetical order, the recipients of this year’s AEF Faculty Grants are:
Catriona Baker, Associate Professor and Chair of Animation and VFX at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design, Massachusetts, USA, was given an award to support her 2D fine art frame-by-frame animated short film Ball Lightning, a story follows a German refugee who immigrated to the United States, after being forced to leave behind her infant daughter during WWII.
Mari Jaye Blanchard, Associate Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA, was awarded funds to support the completion of her animated short film (re)TIRED, a 2D hand-drawn animated short film exploring themes of aging, employment, and the planet’s changing climate.
Mindy Johnson
Mindy Johnson, award-winning author and Adjunct Professor at California Institute of the Arts, California, USA, was given funds to support development to bring century-old artwork by the earliest known female animator to life for her documentary film, The Only Woman Animator – Bessie Mae Kelley & Women at the Dawn of Industry.
Stephan Leeper, Professor of Animation at Central Michigan University, Michigan, USA, was given an award to support development on The Creation Poem Project, an 8-minute animated film with original musical score and spoken-word performance, based on James Weldon Johnson’s well-known African American poem.
Sujin Kim, Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, Arizona, USA, was provided funds to assist in the completion of her 3D animated short film Cunabula, a story of a mixed-race adoptee’s struggles for acceptance into society in the aftermath of the Korean War.
Zachary Zezima, Associate Professor at California State University, California, USA, was given an award to support animation work on his short documentary film The Inevitable Return of an Atomic Being, which explores the effects of military technology and atomic testing on surf culture in the Unites States.
ASIFA-Hollywood is the world’s foremost professional organization dedicated to promoting the Art of Animation and celebrating the people who create it. Today, ASIFA-Hollywood, the largest chapter of the international organization of ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation), supports a wide range of animation activities and preservation efforts through its membership. Current initiatives include the Animation Archive, Animation Aid Foundation, animated film preservation, animation open source support, special events, screenings and of course, the annual Annie Awards.
For more information about ASIFA-Hollywood, please visit www.asifa-hollywood.org.
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