VAF 2024
Above: poster by Precious Flores (VTSU '26) and Vic Provencher (VTSU -24)
Clockwise from top right: Keynote Speaker Dustin Grella, student filmmakers Eve Cole and K Habina, VTSU students Xavier Cadiz, Robin Granito, Raz O'Connor, and Emily Sklodosky
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Above: Chalkboard animation created by students during Dustin Grella's chalk animation workshop
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Left: Happy and focused workshop students!
Dustin Grella is an animator and documentary filmmaker whose work attempts to glean glimpses of colorful insight into the seemingly mundane. His films have screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and won the Walt Disney Award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His film "Prayers for Peace" screened at almost two hundred festivals worldwide and won over forty awards. He has written and mailed himself a letter every day for the past twenty years and has over 7000 sealed letters neatly filed and categorized. He is currently in production of the Animation Hotline, a series of micro-animations where he uses crowd-sourced voicemail messages for content.
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Since 2009, Dustin has been the founder and director of Dusty Studio, which is an animation design and production house specializing in a pastel on slate technique, also called chalkboard animation. Since 2009 they have created animated segments for feature films and documentaries, short films, commercials, explainer videos and fine art installations.
In-house projects include over two hundred episodes of the "Animation Hotline" which is a series of animated shorts that invite anonymous callers to leave a voicemail message that is then turned into a video.
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Dusty Studio’s internationally award winning work has been screened at Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals, Museum of Modern Art and New York Times to name a few. Clients include Zentropa Films, Harvard Business Review, HP, HHMI, Freeform, J Crew, Facebook, Open Society Foundation, Novartis and Pfizer.
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VAF 2023
Sensory Character Development with Keynotes Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter
Artist Talk by Tiny Inventions
Merch Table!
Panel Discussion with Festival Director Kate Renner and Open Pixel Studios Founder Kathryn Taccone
Awards Ceremony
VAF'23 Posters were created by Ally Olsen '24 (Illustration), Cat Hannon '23 (Layout), and Libby Bilé '24 (Layout)
VAF '22 Posters were created by NVU students Samson Fickes,
Ben Holman, Sebastian Siegfried, and Terrence Straight.
VAF 2022 Keynote Speaker: Jo Dery
Jo Dery is an artist who experiments with visual storytelling. She makes short films, books and comics, works on paper, and multi-media projects. Her creative practice is rooted in drawing and writing. Her stories are inspired by folklore, memoir, and a deep love of the natural world. Her short films have screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation. In 2012, she received the Helen Hill Award, which supports innovative independent filmmakers.
She has more than a decade of higher education teaching experience, with a specialty in Film/Video and Animation. Based in Brattleboro, VT, she is currently an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Keene State College in southern New Hampshire. We are thrilled to work with her this year. You can see more of her work on her website at www.jodery.com.
VAF 2022
VAF 2022 Reel
VAF 2019
Poster Illustration and Design by NVU-Lyndon Professor Barclay Tucker
