2021 Films: Nonna

Nonna by Abby Cali

Arlington, MA (Milwaukee Premiere)
Running Time: 3 minutes
Screening Time: Saturday, Sept 11 on Eventive!
Animated/ Women

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An animated stop motion short that explores the magic of grandmothers and the company to be found in the act of cooking.

Website

Director's Bio:

Abby Cali is an illustrator and animator based in the Boston, MA area. She is a graduate of MICA's Illustration Practice MFA Program. Abby is dedicated to character-based art practices that celebrate the wonderful weirdness of our wacky world. She loves making drawings come to life with animation, sewing cute apparel and tiny sculptures, and lettering zany GIFs. When she’s not drawing or teaching Abby can be found playing cooperative board games, cooking up a storm, hanging out with her nearly toothless cat, or hiking very very slowly past interesting flora and fauna.

Director Statement

Nonna is a stop motion short film featuring a magical Sicilian grandmother. The titular character was born from a love of the artist’s family's southern Italian island heritage and an interest in imbuing that Mediterannean culture with her own twist of magic and oddities. Influenced heavily by the global pandemic, the artist also represents themes of solitude, and of cooking as a form of company in times of loneliness. The protagonist, Nonna, is created out of felted wool and has a fully articulated wire armature skeleton that allows her to come to life through animation. The puppet, set, and props are handmade and based off of concept sketches developed throughout this thesis process. As a stop motion film, each frame is one photograph that is staged and lit by the artist. The illusion of movement comes from moving the props and character in minute increments between each photograph, and then displaying the photographs quickly one after another in the final animation.