Stop Motion + Indigenous Storytelling

Animation director Amanda Strong will discuss Indigenous storytelling and stop motion.

Amanda Strong is a Canadian Screen Award and Emmy nominated director, artist, stop motion storyteller and has served as a media based artist for nearly 20 years. She is Michif/Red River Métis and is a member of the MMF (Manitoba Métis Federation) . Strong is the owner, producer and director of the Vancouver based animation studio Spotted Fawn Productions Inc where they create stop motion animations, books, installations and explore digital technologies that compliment the hand made art of stop motion. She is also a director at Atomic Cartoons where she is the current director of Emmy nominated 2D animated TV series, Molly of Denali on PBS.

Strong’s studio successes have screened and exhibited across the globe, most notably at Cannes, TIFF, TIFF Top 10, VIFF, OIAF, Museum of Anthropology, The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the National Museum of American History. A collaboration of which she is particularly proud is with notable First Nations advocate Dr. Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. Together they have produced the Society’s children’s animation series Spirit Bear, which has been well received throughout Canada. Her film Biidaaban (the dawn comes) was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award and was supported by the Clyde Gilmour Technicolour Award via the legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin. In addition to film, Strong is the author of the graphic novel Four Faces of the Moon, based on her short animation.

Strong directed, produced and edited her latest film Inkwo For When the Starving Return, which has acquired the talents of world renowned artists and collaborators from past stop motion features Coraline, Paranorman, Corpse Bride, Wendell and Wild and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. It was the first Canadian and animated project selected for Sundance’s Native Film Lab. The film had it's World Premiere at TIFF 2024. She is currently developing her first stop motion feature film.

This event has been funded by the Ian Gillespie Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media.