Talks

Inkwo For When The Starving Return: Collective Lens: Stop Motion Storytelling

Women in Animation

Amanda Strong is an Indigenous Emmy nominated director, stop motion storyteller and has served as a media based artist for nearly 20 years. She is Michif/Red River Métis and is the owner, producer and director of the Vancouver based animation studio Spotted Fawn Productions Inc where her team creates award winning stop motion animations, books, installations and explores digital technologies that compliment the hand made art of stop motion. Her award winning creations have been screened and exhibited worldwide on screens and in physical spaces including TIFF, TIFF TOP 10, American Museum of Natural History, Chicago Institute of Art, UCAL Berkeley and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. 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. Amanda’s mentors include master puppet creators and supervisor Georgina Hayns and the Oscar winning Alex Bulkley of the production and animation studio Shadowmachine.

Amanda’s films and process are centered on collaboration, process and collective lens.
Amanda 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.

Amanda 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 is set to release fall of 2024. She is currently developing her first stop motion feature, a stop motion TV series and continues to direct at Atomic Cartoons.