Brand New Films! Two Documentaries!

"Creative, dramatic and lovingly crafted. A must see for fans of animation...this fantastic pair of discs easily comes recommended." -Randy Miller III, DVDtalk

"I whole-heartedly recommend picking up Priestley’s anthology. Either that, or encourage your local library to purchase a copy so you can borrow it (with the added benefit of allowing the rest of the community to see it, as well)." -Greg Singer, Animation Magazine

"Packed with high-quality transfers and fun bonus features, her unique animated films are full of compelling themes dealing with gender, love, aging, human rights and candy (!)."
-Jerry Beck, Cartoon Brew

"She tackles the cosmic questions with humor." Ted Mahar, The Oregonian

"Watching the nearly 20 different films assembled on these two DVDs is testament to the breadth of Priestley's talents. She is a comic storyteller and a conceptual painter, her work full of optimism but unafraid to confront the darkness." -Brian Libby, Willamette Week

"Ranging from hand sketched figures to digitally drawn landscapes, Priestley animated imaginative and personally inspired worlds." Therine Youngblood, Release Print

"...there always emerges a kind of warmth in the stories she shares. " -Greg Singer, Animation Magazine
"Joanna Priestley is one of the most interesting and adept personal animators and filmmakers. I have enjoyed her work for years. You have to see this." -Gus Van Sant

"She's the queen of independent animation." -Bill Plympton

"I love Joanna's films. They're brilliant, inventive and amazing. She's the queen of independent animation." -Bill Plympton

"In Joanna Priestley's beautiful films, each frame is alive with invention, possibility and delight." -Richard Peña New York Film Festival, Program Director Film Society of Lincoln Center

“Joanna Priestley’s amazing body of animated films have deservedly earned their place in the pantheon of contemporary international animators. Inventively visioned, superbly crafted, and rich with insight into the physical and spiritual dilemmas that confront us all, each new work provides an unexpected pleasure.” -Bill Foster, Director, Northwest Film Center

“Superb, contemporary animated film. Delightful!” -Marv Newland

“Imaginative, witty and energetic. Pure delight!” -Melinda Ward, Walker Art Center

Further Information:

Big Bonus Material:

Jade Leaf - 5:00
“Priestley’s abstract painting has a wonderful graphic flow.” -Phil Borsos, NW Film and Video Festival Juror.

Kali Yuga - 5:00
Pixillation of a yogi in the forest with animated hardware. Music by Fear No Music.

Fighting Gravity - 13:00 documentary
A tour of Priestley's studio and behind the scenes look at how Surface Dive and Utopia Parkway were made.

Interview with the Sound Guy
Interview with sound genius Lance Limbocker.
Image and Reference Gallery
Everything you need to know in 16 fabulous pages!

A project of creative Capital

Catalog Number: MC-386	Type: Shorts Compilation	Genre: Animation
Copyright: 2005	Length: 67 minutes	Format:  DVD  Region: 0 (All)
TV System: NTSC	ISBN:	UPC: 880198038692
Label: Priestley Motion Pictures

This title is available in Europe for Wholesale - List Prices: £12.99 / 19.95€

Wholesale Purchasing: Program MC-386 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750

Exhibition: Program MC-386 may be licensed for Exhibition.


Films In Compilation

2006-09-29  Willamette Weekly By Brian Libby Both the newest and oldest of Priestley's films are featured on Fighting Gravity. Her first effort, 1983's The Rubber Stamp Film, is a captivating succession of images made with just rubber stamps and index cards, set to a collage of voices and music. The Dancing Bulrushes (1985) presents a traditional Native American myth about a thrill-seeking coyote, using backlit sand animation to vividly render nighttime revelry. The disc also includes two of Priestley's newer works, and watching them back-to-back with her films of some 20 years ago gives a sense of her career's movement from a narrative focus to the unapologetically abstract. Surface Dive (2001) was inspired by a diving trip and combines drawings, sculpture and glass fragments to render a surreal lake-bottom world of constantly morphing starfish and a host of other plants and creatures. Utopia Parkway, made in 1997, compartmentalizes an imaginative array of sculpted creepy-crawlies in a collection of cigar boxes. A bonus DVD feature is an insightful if amateurish behind-the-scenes documentary about how Priestley crafts her films in a Pearl District studio. She talks of enjoying the solitary process of animating cells, constantly tinkering before each single frame is shot.

2006-09-29  Animation World Magazine By Greg Singer Surface Dive (2000) was inspired while exploring an underground river in the Yucatan, Mexico. Priestley wanted to recreate the feeling of observing such a fantastical, alchemical world. During brief moments in the film, Priestley’s homemade multiplane stand is shown as three layers of artwork are invisibly brought to life. More than 200 glass pieces, 600 sculptures and 2,200 pastel and watercolor images were used for the film’s drawn, object and replacement animation. Watching the movement through bits of glass provides an interesting, watery effect, and Priestley rummaged through dumpsters, contacted stain glass suppliers and picked up broken windshields off the street to find her materials. The sculptures were made from Sculpey and surrounded with a silicone mold, and then 15 to 25 duplicates were made with Magi-sculpt to make an animated sequence for each. The sculptures were sanded, gessoed and painted with acrylics. (The project was funded through the Creative Capital Foundation for the Arts.) Andaluz (2004) was created with Karen Aqua while part of a fellowship at Fundacíon Valpariso in Spain. Using prismacolor pencils on paper, Priestley and Aqua worked with a lot of improvisation and spontaneity. The final film is a beautiful “love letter” to Andalusia, Spain, which Priestley describes as a “powerful intersection of desert landscape, cobalt sky, golden sun and turquoise sea.” Lastly, Dew Line (2005) represents Priestley’s growing experimentation with computer-based animation. Using Flash, the film grew out of Priestley’s interest in botany and a series of photographs she took for the Oregon Zoo while camping at an abandoned radar station in the Arctic Circle of Alaska. The title of the film therefore refers to the lines and shapes created by condensed moisture, as well as the DEW (Distant Early Warning) stations built during the Cold War. (The film was made possible by a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.) Priestley is the founding president of ASIFA-Northwest. Her production company, Priestley Motion Pictures (www.PrimoPix.com), has an active apprenticeship program and she teaches animation at the Art Institute of Portland. In addition to festival screenings and retrospectives at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, her work has screened on both PBS and the BBC. All in all, if you are an animation lover, and if you don’t mind someone calling you that to your face, then I whole-heartedly recommend picking up Priestley’s anthology. Either that, or encourage your local library to purchase a copy so you can borrow it (with the added benefit of allowing the rest of the community to see it, as well). It is the Golden Rule of Animation: support others in their craft and journey, as much as we would hope others to do the same for us.

	Avoid Eye Contact Volume I MC-538, 2003 In September 2003, eleven animators met in a large chelsea loft. Eleven went in, Avoid Eye Contact came out. Welcome to Avoid Eye Contact, a tour of the best Independent Animation from New York City. The films on this volume span the last few... more >	$US 20.00 home   $US 20.00 educ   what's this Wholesale pricing available Available now! Format: DVD,NTSC
	Avoid Eye Contact Volume II MC-519, 2005 New York City is a place of constant change, invention and chaos; Avoid Eye Contact sums up these urban qualities in animated terms. Avoid Eye Contact Volume 2 continues to explore the thriving contemporary independent scene going on in New York... more >	$US 20.00 home   $US 20.00 educ   what's this Wholesale pricing available Available now! Format: DVD,NTSC
	Metronomic & Co: French Animated Shorts MC-306, 2004 An epic collection of 11 extraordinary animated shorts like you've never seen before, created by a collective of rebellious directors beyond definition ... Careful, perhaps you are not ready for such an experience... But at night, far from your... more >	$US 25.00 home   $US 50.00 educ   what's this Wholesale pricing available Available now! Format: DVD,NTSC & PAL
	Psychomachia MC-313, 2004 Dont think of them as sins, but more as self indulgences and there is nothing wrong with a little bit of that. Is there?” Lucifer. Following the tradition of personifying passions, moods and character tendencies, the artist has modernised the Seven... more >	$US 25.00 home   $US 25.00 educ   what's this Wholesale pricing available Available now! Format: DVD,NTSC
	Relative Orbits MC-387, 2005 "Creative, dramatic and lovingly crafted. A must see for fans of animation...this fantastic pair of discs easily comes recommended." -Randy Miller III, DVDtalk "I whole-heartedly recommend picking up Priestley’s anthology. Either that, or... more >	$US 19.95 home   $US 39.95 educ   what's this Wholesale pricing available Available now! Format: DVD,NTSC

No screenings found