What is Womanimation!? As the name implies, it's a festival showcasing acclaimed animated film stories created by women from around the world.
From satire to drama, from the everyday to the surreal - in styles from traditional 2-d to stop-motion to computer animation - the festival showcases wide-ranging visual styles.
Festival Herstory
The inaugural festival was held in conjunction with the second international SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now), an event designed to highlight the contributions of women artists for Women’s History Month in March.
Since then, it has played around New England in Spring or early Summer, as one of the premiere showcases of women's animated shorts in North America.
To find out more about previous editions of the festival, touch here.
How to submit:
1. Read the guidelines below.
2. Fill out an entry form HERE (opens in new window).
3. Send the film via WeTransfer HERE, or your own FTP service (DropBox, Google Drive, etc), sharing with email address mergingartsfilmMergingArts@MergingArtsgmailMergingArts.MergingArtscom.
Submission Guidelines
Festival films must be animated, directed by a woman, and narrative in structure (no music videos, trailers, non-narrative experimental pieces, and so forth.)
Films must have been completed no earlier than 2023.
There is no fee to submit a film for consideration.
Note that as we don't charge submission fees, we are also unable to pay screening fees for any film.
Technical Guidelines
Resolution/Dimensions: 1080p, 2K, or 4K.
Codec: H.264/AVC or H.265/HEVC preferred. ProRes acceptable (file will be converted before screening)
Frame rate: 24 or 25 fps
Bit Rate: Between 5 Mbps and 20 Mbps, depending on resulting file size, preferably less than 100MB/minute
Subtitles: Embedded preferred but can accept .srt files or similar
As of January 2023, we are not accepting DCP submissions.
Other Recommendations
None of the following criteria disqualify a film but may count against films in consideration for acceptance:
- Films shorter than 2:00 or longer than 20:00
- Films from 2023
- Films available publicly online
- Films that have played extensively in the US (especially northeastern US)
- Films using non-trivial amounts of AI in their creation
- Subtitle problems (too small, poor contrast, excessive grammar/spelling errors)
Sending Film Files
To submit a file, you can send the film file to our WeTransfer page directly.
Otherwise, use a service such WeTransfer, DropBox, or Google Drive. Share with email address mergingartsfilmMergingArts@MergingArtsgmailMergingArts.MergingArtscom.
Filmmakers accepted into the festival are strongly encouraged to provide a photo of the filmmaker, along with film stills and any other promotional material.