Joanna Priestley, Photo: Jim Hair
This Sunday, April 29th DPC continues our series, A Place Called Home: Lectures on Filmmaking in Portland, with a program featuring three of Portland’s best animators talking about and screening short clips of their work. If you are interested in animation, this is a great opportunity to learn more about our city’s excellence in the field — from three accomplished women artists. As a way to give context to Sunday’s talk, all this week we’re featuring clips and short bios with our presenters. Today’s featured guest is Independent Filmmaker Joanna Priestley.
Joanna got her start in art as a painter, and, after living and working in Paris, she moved to Sisters, Oregon. Due to the lack of opportunities to see projected film (at the time, the town lacked a movie theater), she started “Strictly Cinema,” a screening series at Bend High School, which expanded to Redmond High School, outdoor screenings at local parks and an animation festival. Out of these experiences, she was hired as the Film Librarian at the Northwest Film Center, where she learned about and began experimenting with animation.
Check out this early animation piece from Priestley in 1985, then click below the jump for more on her recent work…
Priestley has gone on to direct, produce and animate 24 films that explore abstraction, botany, landscape, aging and human rights. She has received fellowships from Creative Capital, National Endowment for the Arts, American Film Institute, MacDowell Colony, Fundación Valparaíso and Millay Colony. Priestley teaches animation workshops worldwide, was founding president of ASIFA Northwest and has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1992.
Here’s a recent piece she made for local nonprofits SCRAP and Create Plenty, on the waste created by recycled plastics.
For more on Priestley, check her Website. Don’t forget, she’ll be speaking and showing her work this Sunday at 1PM at the Hollywood Theater! Get tickets and full details here. You won’t want to miss it.
