Conversations with some of the animation industry's most celebrated independent creators.
As an animation auteur, Ann Marie Fleming has made so many films over three decades that she doesn’t actually know the exact number of how many she has made. From feature-length animated films staring Sandra Oh to documentaries, experimental films and short animations made with the NFB, Ann Marie puts her distinct personality and style into all of her work. Even enlisting the help of a myriad of talented animators, she always manages to make her films unmistakably hers. Ann Marie discusses her extensive animation filmmaking career with a focus on her creative process writing, directing and animating.
BIOGRAPHY
Ann Marie Fleming
Filmmaker // Independent
(Old Dog, Window Horses, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam)
Ann Marie Fleming is an independent Canadian filmmaker, animator and artist who works in a variety of different genres, mixing media, and often dealing with themes of family, history and memory.
AMF films' New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly 5 Minutes and Blue Skies both won Best Canadian Short at TIFF. You Take Care Now is on the TIFF Top 10 short films list of 150 essential Canadian films of all time. Her animated feature documentary, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam about her globe-hopping vaudevillian acrobat, magician and comedian great grandfather — is also a graphic novel that won the Doug Wright Award for Best Canadian Comic and was nominated for two Eisner Awards. Window Horses, which takes place at a poetry festival in Iran and stars stickgirl, her long-time avatar voiced by Sandra Oh, won Best Canadian and Best B.C. feature at VIFF and the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best-Animated Feature. Window Horses has been presented around the world, sharing its message of kindness, tolerance and peace through poetry.
Recent short films made with the NFB, include a portrait of LGBTQA+ activists and pop singers, Tegan and Sara, Question Period, which profiles recent Syrian refugee women’s experience in Canada, and Old Dog, which explores aging from both the canine and human perspective. April 2020 is her contribution to an artist series representing the lockdown in the early days of COVID.
She is currently finishing Corona Morphs, an animated/hybrid project for the Standing Wave Ensemble, trying to make music visible.
Website // IMDb // Facebook // Instagram // Twitter // LinkedIn
MODERATOR
Jeff Chiba Stearns
Animation Director, Producer // Meditating Bunny Studio
(The Treebees, Mixed Match, One Big Hapa Family, Yellow Sticky Notes)
Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy®-nominated and Webby award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker, as well as an acclaimed author and illustrator. After graduating from Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation, he founded a Vancouver-based boutique animation studio and publishing company Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. in 2001. Jeff’s short and feature-length films, including What Are You Anyways? (2005), Yellow Sticky Notes (2007), One Big Hapa Family (2010), Ode to a Post-it Note (2010), Yellow Sticky Notes | Canadian Anijam (2013) and Mixed Match (2016), have been broadcast around the world, screened in hundreds of international film festivals and garnered dozens of awards.
Having mixed Japanese and European roots, Jeff’s work often deals with themes of multiethnic identity. He coined the term Hapanimation to describe his style of blending anime and manga with a North American cartoon aesthetic. He has lectured and presented his films at over one hundred universities including Harvard, Cornell and Yale.
In 2018, Jeff wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Mixed Critters, an ABC book. Jeff’s second children’s book, Nori & His Delicious Dreams (2020), features a Japanese Canadian boy named Nori who dreams of sleeping in foods from around the world. In 2021, Jeff completed his first graphic novel, On Being Yukiko, a collaborative graphic novel created with Sansei artist, Lillian Michiko Blakey. It features an intergenerational story addressing both themes of Japanese Canadian history and mixed identity. Jeff is also the creative director for the upcoming animated children’s music series The Treebees.
Website // IMDb // Facebook // Instagram // Twitter // LinkedIn
Conversations with some of the animation industry's most celebrated independent creators.
As an animation auteur, Ann Marie Fleming has made so many films over three decades that she doesn’t actually know the exact number of how many she has made. From feature-length animated films staring Sandra Oh to documentaries, experimental films and short animations made with the NFB, Ann Marie puts her distinct personality and style into all of her work. Even enlisting the help of a myriad of talented animators, she always manages to make her films unmistakably hers. Ann Marie discusses her extensive animation filmmaking career with a focus on her creative process writing, directing and animating.
BIOGRAPHY
Ann Marie Fleming
Filmmaker // Independent
(Old Dog, Window Horses, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam)
Ann Marie Fleming is an independent Canadian filmmaker, animator and artist who works in a variety of different genres, mixing media, and often dealing with themes of family, history and memory.
AMF films' New Shoes: An Interview in Exactly 5 Minutes and Blue Skies both won Best Canadian Short at TIFF. You Take Care Now is on the TIFF Top 10 short films list of 150 essential Canadian films of all time. Her animated feature documentary, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam about her globe-hopping vaudevillian acrobat, magician and comedian great grandfather — is also a graphic novel that won the Doug Wright Award for Best Canadian Comic and was nominated for two Eisner Awards. Window Horses, which takes place at a poetry festival in Iran and stars stickgirl, her long-time avatar voiced by Sandra Oh, won Best Canadian and Best B.C. feature at VIFF and the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best-Animated Feature. Window Horses has been presented around the world, sharing its message of kindness, tolerance and peace through poetry.
Recent short films made with the NFB, include a portrait of LGBTQA+ activists and pop singers, Tegan and Sara, Question Period, which profiles recent Syrian refugee women’s experience in Canada, and Old Dog, which explores aging from both the canine and human perspective. April 2020 is her contribution to an artist series representing the lockdown in the early days of COVID.
She is currently finishing Corona Morphs, an animated/hybrid project for the Standing Wave Ensemble, trying to make music visible.
Website // IMDb // Facebook // Instagram // Twitter // LinkedIn
MODERATOR
Jeff Chiba Stearns
Animation Director, Producer // Meditating Bunny Studio
(The Treebees, Mixed Match, One Big Hapa Family, Yellow Sticky Notes)
Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy®-nominated and Webby award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker, as well as an acclaimed author and illustrator. After graduating from Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation, he founded a Vancouver-based boutique animation studio and publishing company Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. in 2001. Jeff’s short and feature-length films, including What Are You Anyways? (2005), Yellow Sticky Notes (2007), One Big Hapa Family (2010), Ode to a Post-it Note (2010), Yellow Sticky Notes | Canadian Anijam (2013) and Mixed Match (2016), have been broadcast around the world, screened in hundreds of international film festivals and garnered dozens of awards.
Having mixed Japanese and European roots, Jeff’s work often deals with themes of multiethnic identity. He coined the term Hapanimation to describe his style of blending anime and manga with a North American cartoon aesthetic. He has lectured and presented his films at over one hundred universities including Harvard, Cornell and Yale.
In 2018, Jeff wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Mixed Critters, an ABC book. Jeff’s second children’s book, Nori & His Delicious Dreams (2020), features a Japanese Canadian boy named Nori who dreams of sleeping in foods from around the world. In 2021, Jeff completed his first graphic novel, On Being Yukiko, a collaborative graphic novel created with Sansei artist, Lillian Michiko Blakey. It features an intergenerational story addressing both themes of Japanese Canadian history and mixed identity. Jeff is also the creative director for the upcoming animated children’s music series The Treebees.
Website // IMDb // Facebook // Instagram // Twitter // LinkedIn
