The Sea Slug Animation Festival, the newest Seattle film festival whose adorably named “larval edition” runs from March 7–8 at the SIFF Cinema Uptown, is building itself around community—specifically, the vast community of talented independent local animators who call the Pacific Northwest home. In the words of Sea Slug co-founder Hannah Baek, it’s about sending up a “bat signal” for these animators plus those who love their work to come together to celebrate the various forms and build bonds around them.
“We’re trying to build solidarity, community, sustainability, and access,” Baek says. “Part of the access is trying to get people together so they can share work, share projects.” This sentiment is echoed by Sea Slug co-founder Rhys Iliakis, who also helped work on the delightful trailer for the festival. “We’re not doing a move fast and break things, we’re doing a move fast and meet people and build things.”
Passes to attend are $40 (with a $20 price for students) and provides access to all screenings. There are also individual tickets available, but Baek says that the best way to support Sea Slug as they continue growing is with a pass. There will also be an artist alley and chances to connect with animators.
For their first year, projects include the Seattle premiere of the surreal, star-studded coming-of-age film Boys Go to Jupiter, which will include a virtual Q&A with writer/director Julian Glander, and a closing night retrospective screening of the 1976 animated fantasy feature film of Allegro non troppo, which is described as being “a raunchy and rarely seen spoof of Disney’s Fantasia.” There’s also the stop-motion short Les Bêtes from Michael Granberry—an area animator who has worked on a variety of vibrant projects such as Anomalisa, Wendell & Wild, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and the title sequence from the series Severance—as well as the experimental short Gimlet from longtime Washington animator Ruth Hayes.
Hayes, in addition to being a director and animator, was a professor at Evergreen State College and also co-wrote the 1998 article “Northwest Animation: The Roots of Creative Variance” about how the region had become a hub for animation, tracing back this growth over many decades. She says Sea Slug, while still growing, is a great development for local independent animators as it brings audiences to shorts like hers.
“It’s unusual for a film like Gimlet to be in an animation festival because typical animation festivals are usually very character-driven and story-oriented. Gimlet is not,” says Hayes. “It’s more experiential and just about me trying to figure out how to make a film out of this type of material.” (Gimlet was made using a technique known as the phytogram method—using the internal chemistry of plants to create images on photographic emulsion—and has no narrative to speak of.)
Hayes also points to the value of a festival like Sea Slug highlighting the independent work happening outside of the bigger production cities, and showing audiences everything else that is out there to discover. “The focus on local work is really important because people are so used to watching work that comes from elsewhere, and [having] this idea that the really important media production in this country only happens in Los Angeles or New York. And it doesn’t, there is a lot of independent media going on all over the place, and there is a lot of experimental media going on all over the place too,” says Hayes. “So these smaller festivals that foreground that kind of work are really valuable because people get the idea that, ‘Oh, this is kind of accessible! I could make this work myself, I could try to animate or see what kinds of image-making I can work with.’ It’s a really great thing and it should happen more often.”
Hayes says that local festivals with screenings of smaller films are critical and used to take place far more often, but that the once thriving places where you could see these types of films (like Seattle’s local arthouse theaters) are increasingly struggling, or even closing, leaving “slim” offerings for audiences. Still, Hayes says that festivals like Sea Slug and their future give her hope all is not lost with local cinema.
“We have a lot of really great work coming out of the Pacific Northwest and that’s worth celebrating! So I think a festival like Sea Slug can help do that. It’s definitely helping to put local work in the context of a much bigger field, and showing that local work can show up well with work that’s renowned.”
The Sea Slug Animation Festival runs March 7–8 at SIFF Cinema Uptown.