BLON 2023 events

Thorsten S. Wiedemann is founder and artistic director of A MAZE. Under this label, he produces and curates international festivals, exhibitions and workshops at the intersection of games, games culture, digital arts and playful media. With A MAZE. / Berlin, he created international festivals to present arthouse games, playful media and alternative games culture. He generates new and controversial formats (e.g. A MAZE. Magazine, A MAZE. Pop-ups, A MAZE. / SPACE, A MAZE. Train Jam) and provides room for experimentation and exchange. In 2012, Thorsten established the A MAZE. Awards, which are given to artistic games in six categories. His focus is on the diverse and interdisciplinary discourse about the media in the 21st century, and in filling the gaps between playful media, art and technology. During his Disconnected performance, he also spent 48 hours immersed in virtual reality! Thorsten currently lives and works in Berlin.

Antanas Skučas has worked in the field of animation since 2005. His debut film 'Childhood Diary' was awarded a Lithuanian Film Academy Award in 2009. In 2015, he founded the film production company 'Tylus kinas'. In addition to his creative activities, he teaches at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

Edgaras Janušonis is a PhD student at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VILNIUS TECH): Faculty of Fundamental Sciences, specialising in digital animation technologies. His short animated film, 'The Crow and The Fox' is presented at the BLON 2023 festival.

Rimas Sakalauskas is a video artist and motion graphics designer, working in the fields of VR, AR and video projections.

Rūta Stalmokaitė is an illustrator and animator from Vilnius. A graduate of the Cambridge School of Art, UK, she illustrates and animates playful characters. Her animated film 'And the Rest You Already Know' has already been accepted into numerous international festivals. Rūta wants to continue spreading the good name of Lithuania with her art – more of which you can find at ru-st.com

Greta is a recent graduate in animation from the University for the Creative Arts in the UK. During her studies at university, she directed three films. Her film 'Trash Can' (2022) was shown at various festivals, and her graduation film 'Thoughts About The Universe That Will Keep You Awake' (2023) recently began its festival journey. In her films, Greta mostly focuses on characters, and experiments with the use of the blank space.

Meinardas has been interested in and creating animations since childhood. In 2010, he graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a BA in animation. His final work at the Academy, 'The Impossible Moon' has travelled to a number of film festivals globally, and has attracted much attention.
In 2012, Meinardas founded the animation studio 'Meinart', whose main vision is to create bright and creative animation in search of new narrative forms. As a director, he has created a series of short animated films
including 'RGB', 'Hunt' and 'Look'. His newest film, 'The Perfect Fit', was released in 2022 and is now being shown around the world at various festivals. In 2023 as a director and producer, he created one of the biggest animated feature films in Lithuania 'Kakė Makė: Mano Filmas'.

Vika Ivanova is an aspiring animation director and documentary
filmmaker based in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is a student at Kharkiv Karazin University, studying art history and cultural studies. She began her career in black-and-white film photography, and shot and edited lifestyle videos. At the moment she is part of a production team working on a series of stop-motion animations. These films are dedicated to the legends and local narratives of Kharkiv, and presented as humorous and non-standard stories to unpack and discover.

Viktoriia Grivina is a scriptwriter and production manager. She is a writer and cultural researcher from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her latest short story, 'My Azov Sea', is set for print publication in 2023. At the moment, she is working on 'Fury Tales', a series of short scripts that make use of the genres of sci-fi, magical realism and absurdist comedy to reflect on the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. 'Fury Tales' are part of the Khastoria stop-motion animation series. Viktoriia’s current PhD studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland are dedicated to the mythological and aesthetic transformations of cities in Ukraine in times of war.

Since 2019, Juliya ha been head of the cultural and educational centre 'SvitLytsia' – a branch of the TepLytsia cultural and innovation platform of Brovary City Council. She enjoys making animations, first using drawings, then later using plasticine. Under her leadership, cartoons have been created based on the poems of Taras Shevchenko, 'Lesya Ukrainka', memorialising significant dates. The animated figures are sculpted by the team or the children of the institution's circle. Juliya's animations have taken part in Ukrainian and national competitions.

Gintarė Valevičiūtė-B. is a creator of interdisciplinary art. She is actively involved in creating, organising and curating various art projects and exhibitions, and teaching masterclasses in creativity. Having completed her postgraduate studies in Art at Vilnius Academy of the Arts, she currently teaches in the Academy's Department of Photography, Animation and Media Arts. She is an active participant in its promotion of the potential uses of animation in expanded fields, and exhibits her work at art shows and film festivals.

Michael Margulls was born in Kyiv, graduated from Kiev National University of Construction and Architecture, then graduated from the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts as a theatre director. He expanded his horizons by earning qualifications at business schools in Germany, Ireland and Switzerland. His films include:

2014: short film 'Halabudka'
2018: TV series 'Myshko and Dzvinka'
2018: 3D feature film 'Trouble Nubble Gum'
2021-2022: short films 'Tiger is Strolling Around', 'Come Outside, Masha', 'Papier-Mache'
2023: 3D feature film 'Dalia and the Red Book'

Akvilė Bliujūtė – Janušė is a Producer in the animation industry orientated to children‘s films. She also writes scripts for short animated films. Akvilė graduated from Middlesex University and gained her first professional experience in Lithuania within the film industry. In 2017, Akvilė joined “Meinart” animation studio. During these years she produced various projects ranging from commercials to music videos and short and feature animated films.

Arthur Izakowicz kickstarted his filmmaking career at the age of 11 with his debut picture, 'The Murder Mystery'. Some years later, he was accepted into the prestigious Polish National Film School in Łódź, where he obtained his Master's in cinematography. During the early stages of his career, Arthur had the privilege of working closely with industry veterans Mattias Montero and Adam Ber as a new talent at Indio Film. Their mentorship and guidance played a crucial role in shaping his artistic vision and honing his skills as a director.
Today, Arthur is represented by the esteemed agency Social Club Film in Stockholm.

Petra Stipetić is a qualified sculptor and educator who turned her love of storytelling into a profession with her animation studies in Kassel. Since then, she has produced award-winning short films that have been screened at festivals worldwide.
Petra discovered her love and talent for creating a wide variety of characters and their worlds during her liberal arts studies in Mainz, which focused on sculpture. Since 2014, when she began her studies in visual communication, with a focus on animation, she has been breathing life into her characters and letting them tell their own stories. Her short films have gone on to win various awards at national and international film festivals. Since 2022, she has been a lecturer in Animation and Visual Storytelling at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld.

Adel Khan Farooq is a filmmaker from Norway working in animation, fiction and documentary, as well as an author and journalist. His feature documentary 'Recruiting for Jihad' (2017) was screened at several major festivals, including Hot Docs, AFI DOCS, DOC NYC, IDFA, One World-International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, and CPH:DOX. His most recent film, the short animation Cockroaches (2022), was produced by the Oscar-winning animation studio Mikrofilm, and premiered at Animafest Zagreb. Cockroaches has also been screened at other major animation festivals, winning the audience award at Monstra this year.

Finnish filmmakers Maurinen and Laasanen are both multi-talents in the fields of art, culture and media. Besides their independent careers, they have also worked on multiple projects together including short films, animations and even musical theatre. Passion for comedy, storytelling, DIY culture and kind values has brought them together and made them an unstoppable creative team, ready to put extra effort into silly things.

Daniel Maaß was born in 1990 in Bogota, Colombia. He studied Visual Communication at Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany, and graduated with a Master's degree, majoring in animation. IN/FINITE is his graduation film.
During his studies, he also worked as an artistic assistant at the Didactics of Biology Department at University of Kassel, where he discovered his enthusiasm for motion graphics. He now works as senior art director at AirProfile, Kassel.

Joanna Szlembarska is a director, animator and graduate of the Łódź Film School. Her films are mostly made using stop-motion animation, her favourite technique being puppet animation, due to the 'corporeality' of the medium. The theme of her works is the anxiety that accompanies human sexuality. The aesthetics of her animation are minimalist and monochromatic, but give the impression of being monumental.

Mona Keil works with experimental visual art, focusing on animated movies. Her main interest lies in an analogue approach to visual material, so her work includes stop-motion, cut-out animation and drawn animation. After completing a Bachelor's degree in Visual Communication at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar and a diploma in Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, she is now a freelance director and artist based in Leipzig.

Gwenola Heck is a half-French, half-German animator, born in
1995 in Karlsruhe, Germany. She studied audiovisual media at Stuttgart Media University, and graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering. Later, she worked as a 3D Artist in Stuttgart and Hamburg. Since 2019, she has been studying animation at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, and works on 2D and stop-motion animation films.

Born in Berlin in 1991, Ilya Barrett studied at the Berlin-Weißensee Art School, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in visual Communication. He later worked as a freelance animator and illustrator in Berlin and New York. Since 2019, he has been studying animation at Filmakademie BadenWürttemberg.

Rytis Jadzevičius is a familiar face in the Lithuanian games industry, as CEO of the company Fluxo Games – an independent game development studio that specialises in creating unique game experiences for PC and mobile platforms. Rytis is also chairman of the board of the Lithuanian Game Developers Association. As a representative of the association, he actively promotes cooperation and connections between game creators in Lithuania and abroad, thus contributing to the growth of the industry.

Rokas has been practising law since 2007. After gaining valuable experience at a leading Baltic law firm, working on behalf of one of the world's leading scientific technology companies, Rokas now has his own legal firm. He mostly advises clients on issues of commercial and business law, intellectual property, contracts and public procurement. A significant portion of his clients are film and TV producers, creative businesses and smart individuals. He usually assists film and TV producers in preparing the necessary contracts, advising on applications for state funding and disputes with funding authorities, assisting them in taking advantage of tax incentives, and securing the intellectual property rights to their work.