Official Screening Animation 5th Season

Time

0:04:06

USA

VIncenzo Lodigiani, Director

Evan Schiller, Director, Writer

An exploration of the illusory nature of Time.

"Time is not a clock. It’s not a number. It’s a trickster, stretching and collapsing endlessly to the rhythm of our inner state. A moment of terror can last forever, yet a perfect day can vanish in a blink.

We wanted to explore this illusion through animation, a medium that is itself an illusion of time. By bending pacing, shifting rhythms, and playing with movement, 'Time' visualizes what we all experience but rarely see: the way time expands in solitude, accelerates in joy, and stops altogether in moments of deep presence.

In the end, we find time only exists in our minds. And maybe the only way to master it is to stop chasing it."

—E.B. Schiller, writer and co-director

Vincenzo Lodigiani is an award-winning motion artist and animation director based in New York City. His short film ‘Split’ garnered millions of views, was featured on NOWNESS and was selected as a Vimeo Staff pick. His commercial work for the New York Times, Stella Artois, Porsche, Square, and many others has made him one of the most sought after animators working today.

https://centolodigiani.com/

r 

Evan Schiller (E.B. Schiller) is a 2x Emmy-nominated writer based in Los Angeles. He has spent nearly a decade as a writer and creative director for Apple. His work has been recognized at Cannes, The One Show, Clios, D&AD, The Andys, Webbys, AICP and the Emmys, and has aired during the Olympics, the NBA, NFL and MLB playoffs, The Grammys, as well as being featured on CNN, the Today Show, Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show, AdWeek, AdAge, Creativity, and most importantly, Oprah’s Twitter. 

https://cargocollective.com/evanschiller

Limbed

USA

0:01:30

Anjali Pulim, Director, Animator

Ravi Shankar, Writer, 

Dhuruvit Singh, Producer

Ravi Shankar, Key Cast

Original Soundtrack, Nitin Mitta and Dhruvit Shah

Production, Lucky Recording Studio 

Pushcart Prize winning Indian American poet Ravi Shankar performs his poem "Limbed"

I Never Thought of Phoenixes

USA

0:02:00

Courtney Tanigucki, Director, 

Yan Sham-Shackleton, Writer, Key Cast, "Narrator"

Ian Gottlieb, Music

USA

0:02:00

“I Never Thought of Phoenixes” is an experimental film response to, and reflection on the fires that happened in Los Angeles, California and Hong Kong in 2025. The film alludes to the mythology of both the Western and Chinese birds.

All filmmakers reside in Los Angeles, California, while Yan Sham-Shackleton, who wrote and narrated the poem, immigrated from Hong Kong.

The visuals are a mixture of animation by Courtney Taniguchi, news footage, and personal photographs. The music is an original score by Ian Gottlieb.

Courtney Taniguchi is a Los Angeles native. The LA fires respectively touched her first home and current neighborhood. She graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts for Film Production and specialized in animation. She then attended the Royal College of Art, experimenting in narrative work within technology and design. Her work includes clients such as Nike, ESPN, and the NRDC. Her editing was nominated for an Emmy short documentary film.

Yan Sham-Shackleton is from Hong Kong and immigrated to the US in 2006. She resides in Los Angeles. She loves writing, art, yoga, and her two cats.

Ian Gottlieb is a Los Angeles-based composer and cellist who draws from wide-ranging musical worlds, including studying classical music at Yale, jamming samba in São Paulo, and touring China with experimental rock band Invisible Anatomy. His film music appears on Netflix, Disney+, and MGM+ in productions including Chef’s Table and The Witcher. His concert works, written for everything from folk instruments to full orchestra, have been performed by Grammy-winning and nominated artists, including Palaver Strings, Sandbox Percussion, and Hilary Summers. Outside music, Ian unwinds by growing food and escaping into nature.

The Haunted Saxophone

0:06:42

USA

0:06:42

Ron Campbell, Director

Katarina Fink, Director, Animator

Ron Campbell, Writer

Soar Feat Unlimited, Producer

Warning: this animated short contains poetry, jazz and multiple fatalities.
THE HAUNTED SAXOPHONE.
Propped up in the window of a pawn shop is an old tenor saxophone. Little is known of its history (and mystery) until now...
A cautionary tale told by an unreliable narrator.
THE HAUNTED SAXOPHONE is drawn, written and performed by Ron Campbell with videography and animation by Katarina Fink.

Ron Campbell (www.soarfeat.org) is a writer, performer and comic book artist. Katarina Fink (https://kittykstudios.carrd.co/) is a videographer and animator. They both live in the Bay Area, California.

Saddleback Street

0:01:30

USA

Hunter Woelfle, Director

Dominic Hure, Writer

Hunter Woelfle, Producer

Hunter Woelfle is a writer-director who, on numerous occasions, has lied to bowling alleys about needing size 12 shoes, and then gone bowling with those shoes rattling around his size 10 (9 1/2) feet. He loves visual storytelling and darkly playful narratives about regular people. Originally from the Bay Area, he has studied at CalArts, the Academy of Art, and Cal State Long Beach. Currently, he “earns” a “living” in "Los" "Angeles" as a 1st AD on feature films.

Director Statement

My best friend Dominic wrote a lovely poem in 2021. I wanted to make an animated short around it, and it was very important that it was all animated traditionally, with crayons, watercolor, pieces of matchsticks and tinfoil. After one month of this, I gave up. Animating is so hard. I had a stack of 200 frames that sat on my shelf for 4 years. I found this stack in January of 2025 and finished it. It felt like meeting a younger version of myself. I was confronted with the familiar magic that only exists in memories of discovery. I got to experience exactly what this poem was about while I was making it. I hope someone else might feel it too watching.

Naked in the Desert with A Gun

0:04:59

USA

Kate Oneal, Director, Writer, Animator

Animated musical short based on the story of the flooding of St. Thomas NV, now submerged under Lake Mead.

\

09:01 Berkovich

0:06:00

Student

Germany

Anya RyzhkovaDirector

Evgenia BerkovichText

Anastasiia Anisimova, Sound 

• Anya Ryzhkova, Voice

The film is based on a speech by the Russian theater director Evgenia Berkovich. Together with the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, Evgenia Berkovich has been under arrest and jailed since May 2023 on charges of "public calls to terrorism". On the ninth of January 2024, before the verdict was supposed to be announced, she read her final speech in verse.

Anya (Anna) Ryzhkova is an independent animation artist and filmmaker. She was born in Kaliningrad in 1998. In 2007 she moved to Germany and grew up in Chemnitz. Since 2019 she is studying Media Art and Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar.​​​​​​​

A Rose

0:00:39

Student

USA

Piper Riley Kinion, 

Director, Writer

A woman wakes suddenly to a pain in her chest. 

48 hour animated short film created alongside a Gothic-themed poem, "Atheroma Pantoum"

1837: Cold Magic

0:01:39

USA

Cabral Zimele-Keita, Director, Producer

Michelle Nzadi Keita, Writer

This animated short brings to life M. Nzadi Keita's persona poem of the same title; the poem imagines the voice of a young laundress and future abolitionist, Anna Murray Douglass, who was Frederick Douglass's first wife.

Cabral Zimele-Keita is a seasoned 3D artist, motion graphics designer, and video editor with over a decade of experience across the commercial, educational, medical, and financial sectors. He currently serves as a Senior Animator and Editor at Empower.

Cabral Zimele-Keita draws inspiration from the extraordinary and the everyday—believing that “with careful observation, creative insight can emerge from even the most ordinary moments."

Breath

0:10:00 

UK

David Van-Cauter, Director, Writer

John Callaghan, Animation, Original Score

A film-poem of a nine-part sequence, on the subject of relationships, pregnancy and loss. It uses minimal animation of shapes (mainly circles) to convey the emotion. The poem appears in the 2025 pamphlet "Breathing" (Arenig Press)

David Van-Cauter is British poet, tutor and editor, currently based in Sheffield. He has two pamphlets published by Arenig Press, Mirror Lake (2019) and Breathing (2025).
https://www.arenig.co.uk/