2026 Film: ConTempt Warning

ConTempt Warning by Ian Anastas

Wisconsin (Wisconsin Premiere)

Running Time: 3 minutes

Comedy/ Animation

September 

Avalon Atmospheric Theater

2473 S Kinnickinnic Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207

Alone in a desolate wasteland, our hero attempts a musical performance for a smart phone that appears to have a mind of its own.

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Director's Bio:

Ian Anastas is an artist, animator, and has been an educator in fine arts and creative technology for over 15 years. He has taught elementary through high school students in subjects ranging from computer science, programming, video game design, robotics, 3D modeling and printing, 2D and 3D animation, as well as fine art subjects such as drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, and art history. He has also led several continuing education seminars for adult educators covering educational technology, game design, programming, and animation. Ian has also worked as a freelance artist in the fields of illustration, comics, and tattoo design. In November of 2025, Ian completed his MFA in animation through the Savannah College of Art and Design. He lives in the city of Milwaukee with his wife and two children. ConTempt Warning is his first film.

Director's Statement:

As a storyteller I’m attracted to genre fiction’s capacity for exploring broad ethical questions without necessarily being prescriptive. There’s a brutality to comedy, horror, and science fiction that can cut directly to playing with ideas around moral principles. I think animation is a marvelous convention to leverage in this context because it allows for complete control to abstract the visuals and performances to suit the artist’s needs, even if it is just to get a laugh.
ConTempt Warning is, in part, a love letter to the animated comedies that I fell in love with as a child. Specifically, these include the American short animated musical comedies of the 1940s
and 50s produced by Warner Brothers, MGM, and Disney. As could only be achieved through animation, works of this era integrated their visuals with what I see as the spirit of the Surrealists and Absurdists, which were emerging subversive artistic and philosophical movements of that time. They also leveraged and pushed the timelessly effective comedic performance motifs of the silent film era and classical Hollywood established by greats like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Marx Brothers, and The Three Stooges.

This film is also meant to comedically satirize social media content creation. The space that animation should now occupy is something I think about often as a (hopefully) burgeoning but middle-aged filmmaker. In a media culture of dying cinemas and over-saturated television, suffused with a depthless abyss of inane internet content, this film is an attempt to find that space by reaching back to those beloved conventions that I also happen to think are distinctly suited for this effort.