Maria Stanisheva will present a case-study of her experience working in various formats to create "art for social change" on topics such as Women's rights; Inclusion of people with disabilities; Racial inequality; Sexual discrimination; Refugees; Climate Change and more. She will discuss ways of combining animation and documentary content in short and feature-length films, human rights campaigns, online series, educational videos, political satire, environmental activist clips and a post-doc research project presented in an animated format. The workshop will open up a debate about the practicalities behind film production and ways in which students can summarise and present their projects for an audience beyond the academic world.
Maria Stanisheva is a film director/producer and founder of ANIMADOCS, an independent film production house based between NYC and Paris. She is a graduate of Sofia University, Central European University and New York Film Academy’s Documentary filmmaking program and has over 10 years of experience working on feature films, TV and online series, independent and commissioned shorts. Maria specialises in social issue documentaries, animation and experimenting with mixed genres. The animated-documentary FATHER which she produced in 2012 was screened at over 100 film festivals and awarded 28 times, including the Golden Dove for Animated Film at DOK Leipzig Festival. Her 2016 animated campaign “Together to End Male Guardianship” commissioned by Human Rights Watch - an awareness campaign based on real-life stories from Saudi Arabia - was seen by over 10 million people and featured in the New York Times, Euronews, CNN and BBC. Maria is a faculty member of the New York Film Academy’s Documentary Department and teaches classes in"Animation for Documentary Film“.