GLAS Unveils Programming Slate For 4th Edition And New Vimeo Staff Pick Award (Exclusive)

The fourth edition of Berkeley’s GLAS Animation Festival, which has previously announced its special guests and competition line-up, unveiled its full programming line-up today, including artist retrospectives, educational sessions, and conversations with renowned industry professionals.

This year, for the first time ever, the Vimeo Staff Pick Award will be part of GLAS. Filmmakers who have been selected for GLAS have the additional opportunity of having their work viewed by Vimeo’s curation team, who will select one winner to be announced on Sunday, March 24. The winner will receive a $2,500 cash prize and have their film launched as a Vimeo Staff Pick on Monday, March 25.

In addition, the FXX Elevation Award presented by FX Networks, which was introduced at last year’s festival, returns for the 2019 edition to honor a film in competition that embodies distinctive characters, bold storytelling, and a singular point of view. The winning director will receive a $25,000 grant to develop an original animated project with FXX.

With a strong focus on talent development, GLAS provides a number of educational opportunities for attendees to gain knowledge from industry figures. Some of the highlights include:

• An illustration workshop with Jisoo Kim, a South Korean artist whose personal films have played at Ottawa, Annecy, and Krok animation festivals, and who since graduating, has worked at Disney, Dreamworks, Frederator, and Warner Bros. on projects such as Skull Girls, She Ra, and Harley Quinn.

  

• A panel called “How to Pitch Your Film (to people who can actually get it made),” in which a range of executives, talent managers, and producers speak in-depth on the ins and outs of pitching projects from tv series to short films.
• A talk called “Distribution 101” with Luce Grosjean, head of France’s Miyu Distribution, that discusses how to send films to festivals, release them online, and sell them.

Highlighting independent artists from around the world, GLASS 2019 will feature several retrospectives and in-depth conversations with leading talents. As part of a partnership with UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), the festival will present retrospectives of Chicago-based filmmaker Jim Trainor and Australian filmmaker Dennis Tupicoff, both of whom will be in attendance for Q&As following their films.

Other retrospectives will celebrate the works of French-Canadian animator Michele Cournoyer, Japanese animator Koji Yamamura, and late Ghibli master Isao Takahata, who passed away last year.

A series of talks and conversations with artists will give insights on their career paths and individual creative processes. Participants include Ralph Breaks the Internet head of story Josie Trinidad, Superjail! co-creator Christy Karacas, Summer Camp Island creator Julia Pott, This Magnificent Cake! co-director Marc James Roels, and digital artist Kim Laughton.

GLAS 2019 also has a two-part program on British Animation in the 1980s and ’90s curated by Irene Kotlarz; a shorts program from the Miami-based non-profit filmmaking collective Borscht Corp; and feature film screenings, including Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai and Denis Do’s Funan, which won the top feature prize at last year’s Annecy animation festival.

The GLAS Animation Festival will take place March 21-24 in Berkeley, California. Passes for the festival are available on the GLAS website as well as the full list of programs and a schedule of times and locations.