Talk
Conversation with Florence Miailhe

Festival Guest of Honor


Moderated by Signe Baumane

Online: Fri, Feb 18–Mon, Feb 21
On Eventive
In Person: Sat, Feb 12 at 5:30pm
FIAF Skyroom



Co-presented with Women in Animation

Author of many short films and a recent award-winning first feature, The Crossing, Florence Miailhe, Animation First 2022’s guest of honor, discusses the inspiration behind her carefully crafted and deeply poetic films. Throughout her career, Miailhe has hand-painted or hand-drew each frame to create deeply textured and vividly animated characters and sets. She will discuss the making of The Crossing, her creative process throughout an unusual career, and her sources of inspiration.

“There is an intense vibration in the films by Florence Miailhe. A running fever, an impulsive insolence, a palpitation of colors, of sounds, which make you dizzy.” – Catherine Humblot, Le Monde

60 min

About Florence Miailhe

Florence graduated from the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs with a specialization in engraving. She began her professional career as a press model maker, exhibiting drawings and engravings.

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    • In 1991, she directed her first short film Hammam. Since then, she has imposed a very personal style in animated cinema with a pictorial sensuality and narrative poetry of her own. She makes her films based on paint, pastel or sand, directly under the camera, proceeding by recovery. Her work is noticed in various festivals in France and internationally. She received the César for best short film in 2002 for A Summer Night Rendez-vous, a special mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 for Urban Tale and received in 2015 a Cristal d’honneur, at the 39th Annecy International Animated Film Festival for all of her work.

      She has worked as a teacher in prestigious animation schools: les Gobelins, ENSAD, la Poudrière, and continues to work as a visual artist.

      Most of her films have been written with the collaboration of writer Marie Desplechin. Their first feature film The Crossing received in 2010 the prize for best screenplay at the Premiers Plans Festival the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution, and the Audience Award at Animation is Film. It came out in France at the end of September 2021.

About Signe Baumane

Signe Baumane is a Latvian-born independent filmmaker, artist and animator with an interest in a wide variety of narrative themes, including sex, pregnancy, bodily functions, love, marriage, and the individual vs. society.

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    • Many of her films are told with a strong female point of view. Signe is not afraid to experiment, be provocative or bring the most personal of issues to light.

      Signe believes that animation is a perfect medium to tell layered, complicated stories. She is fascinated by ability of animation to incorporate a wide variety of art forms. Her latest projects – the feature films Rocks in my Pockets and My Love Affair With Marriage – fuse animation with music, theater, science, photography, lighting, three-dimensional sets and traditional hand-drawn animation.

      Signe is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow in Film for New York Foundation for the Arts. Her 16 animated shorts have screened collectively at over 400 film festivals including Berlinale, Sundance and Annecy. Rocks In My Pockets premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2014, went to over 150 film festivals and opened theatrically in the US through Zeitgeist Films. Since 2015, she has been working on My Love Affair With Marriage, which will premiere in 2022.