Speakers

Dave Sidaway is a staff photographer at The Montreal Gazette, as well as free-lancing for other newspapers and services, such as: The Globe & Mail, The Winnipeg Sun, Reuters, and United Press Canada.His 36 years in news photography began during the days of B&W film and continues to today’s digital world.  He has covered events from the banal to the Stanley Cup, the Grand Prix of Monaco, the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Spain and the famine in Ethiopia.

Rising from humble roots in working-class London to garner three Oscar nominations, Gerald has been a key figure in animation for over fifty years. Gerald began his Canadian career at the National Film Board of Canada, where he directed the Oscar-nominated My Financial Career, and directed Buster Keaton in what would turn out to the be the silent film great’s final short, The Railrodder (1965). The following years saw collaborations with Harold Pinter, Donald Pleasance and Ringo Starr (he was an animator on Yellow Submarine). Gerald had three Oscar nominations for animation and live action under his belt when he was tapped by Ivan Reitman to direct Heavy Metal (1981), the cult animated feature for which he is perhaps best known. The film involved a team of over 1000 animators and crew working on multiple continents,Gerald’s irreverent, playful yet technically disciplined style continues to have a huge impact on animators working today. South Park dedicated an entire episode to Heavy Metal. Gerald is currently working on High Flight, an animated short based on the eponymous poem by downed WWII airman John Magee. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

“To his neighbours in the Eastern Townships community of West Brome, he is known as a jovial garlic farmer and builder of model airplanes. Fact is, however, that Potterton is something akin to a Forrest Gump in the sense that he has been smack in the middle of many animation milestones in the last century.” – Bill Brownstein, Montreal Gazette, November 5, 2015)

AISLIN is the name of Terry Mosher’s elder daughter, and the nom de plume that he has used for over forty-five years as the political cartoonist for Montreal’s English-language daily newspaper, The Montreal Gazette. Mosher is also the President emeritus of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists.

Mosher is a regular speaker on the topics of humour, history and the importance of cartooning as a communications tool. He has appeared at national conferences such as Idea City, the Banff Festival for The Arts, Montreal’s Canadian Club and numerous writers’ festivals. Mosher has also served as a judge and participant in International cartoon competitions and other gatherings, most recently in Portugal, Turkey, China, Australia Cuba, and South Korea.

From April 7th to August 13th, 2017, Montreal’s McCord Museum will host a retrospective of Aislin’s work entitiled Aislin: 50 Years of Cartooning – from Trudeau to Trudeau.

Marie-Claude Beauchamp has been active in the film and television industry for over twenty-five years. She is the driving force behind CarpeDiem Film & TV, which she founded in 2004, to bring quality family and children’s entertainment to audiences worldwide.

Her most recent project is the 3d stereoscopic animated feature film Snowtime!/La geurre des tuques (a.k.a Cleo) which which had worldwide success.

She specializes in international co-productions and is renowned as a producer who makes an extra effort to understand the special needs of her partners.

Clive was a cofounder of Nelvana Animation studios, with Michael Hirsch and Patrick Loubert.  One of the titans of Canadian animation, Nelvana produced prolifically in the 1980s and 1990s including the animated series Tintin, White Fang, Care Bears along with feature films Rock and Rule (1982) and others. Nelvana produced the animated segment of the Star Wars Holiday Special that introduced the world to bounty hunter Boba Fett.

Nelvana was sold to Corus Media in 2000.

IN THE BEGINNING. My name is George Snow. I am a video artist from the late 80’s. In recent years I have been working with Tom van Vliet of the World Wide Video Festival on a panoramic movie developed from the works of Alberti, Piranesi and Escher. (www.george-snow.com). Unfortunately, although the panoramic movie was completed 5 years ago, there have never been the funds to exhibit it. So now my effort has involved moving the project to the Unity games engine and exporting it to an Oculus Rift VR headset.

AS IT WAS. My previous video art was commissioned by Channel 4, the BBC and the Arts Council. It has been shown in Video Brazil, Tate Liverpool, and MoMA New York. Stacks of other festivals but I can’t be bothered to mention them all.

AS IT IS. The first stage of the transformation is complete. In it’s present form the space can be navigated with a games controller and viewed on a conventional monitor. It is shortly to be built as an immersive VR experience using the Oculus VR headset.

AS IT WILL BE. Now. How do I develop this VR space? There are a number of options. The first being the elementary objective of any game. That is to search for something. In this case the Vanishing Point. Perhaps a clue will be found in a Muybridge cycle or in a steam train from an ancient Italian mine. In this world I have created a three machines. Two locomotives and Leonardo’s flying machine. Can these machines make sense of their environment, and by making sense of their environment can they make decisions leading to the successful attainment of their objective? Central to my theme of space enclosed and defined by architecture is the question ‘If Space, as we perceive it, is three dimensional can the same be thought of for Time?”

Secondly. The space I have created is HUGE. It really is big. This is because the world is enclosed by a stadium designed (but never built) by Alberti. The endless corridors provide space for virtual exhibits. This direction interests me a lot. Presently the ‘exhibition space’ consists of still art and Muybridge loops- but it could, with the support of a dedicated programmer, import live video feeds.

Pascal Pelletier of Figure 55 Productions has extensive experience in direction. Since founding Figure 55 in 2006, he has put his talent and expertise to work on custom creations as timeless as they are dazzling. He has been Director of Production and Development at Studio Plasma, where he is a partner, since 2007.

In 2014 Pascal produced the immersive visual and musical project «Harmonielehre» in collaboration with the SAT and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kent Nagano.

For over 20 years, Melleefresh, President of Toronto-based label Play Records, has been breaking new ground in Dance and Electro as a singer, songwriter, producer and DJ. Her brilliant work from ’05 – ’09 with deadmau5 (as duo Freshmau5) earned her a Juno nomination, and several Beatport and Billboard #1 hits.

Melleefresh is also Melleny Melody, voice actor and personality who has lent her talents to numerous animated shows over the years. Melleny played 3 characters on the world-renowned TV series, The Care Bears, and appeared in Inspector Gadget, Strawberry Shortcake, and many others.

Neil studied architecture before getting into making films. His first film A Sarajevo Diary was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award, and won a BAFTA with his title sequence for Channel 4 TV.

He has made several documentaries and short films which have been shown at festivals around the world and is now in pre-production for his first fiction feature The Assignment, and a feature documentary on African migrants travelling to Europe by boat.

Besides film, he has recently begun working on games, as he feels it is an excellent tool to tell stories and get a message across.

Anne is originally from Paris, France and has lived in Montreal since 1999. She has worked extensively with Megafun Productions to develop their production department of animated series, in partnership with such major French studios as Les Armateurs, Xilam, Gaumont-Alphanim, Futurikon and Ellipse Animation…

Her management background (she graduated from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris) as well as her passion for international partnerships made her produce over 25 animated series from 2000 through 2010 with many countries (France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, Brazil). Along these years, Anne developed strong working relationships with animation studios based in various Asian countries: China, Vietnam, Taïwan and South Korea.

For the past 17 years, Athena has been an integral member of the TELETOON team. As Director of Content for TELETOON, Athena oversees content development, acquisitions and production for TELETOON’s English and French brands including TELETOON/TÉLÉTOON, TELETOON Retro/TÉLÉTOON Rétro, TELETOON at Night/TÉLÉTOON la Nuit, as well as Cartoon Network, along with their respective multiplatform services.

In her most recent role as Manager of Original Production for TELETOON, she was responsible for supervising the development and production of original programming for TELETOON and TELETOON at Night in English and French. Since joining TELETOON, Athena has been instrumental in the growth and success of such series as Dr. Dimensionpants, Detentionaire, Camp Lakebottom, Rocket Monkeys, the Total Drama Island franchise, Fugget About It and Têtes à claques (Knuckleheads).