Animation Magazine — September 21, 2021
‘Blood of the Family Tree’: Christine Panushka Discusses the Creation of Her Self-Made Feature

***This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. ’21 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 313)***

Artist, filmmaker, animator and educator Christine Panushka has completed her first feature-length film, Blood of the Family Tree — which is also her most personal project to date. The 63-minute film uses rhythm and movement to explore “questions of connections, hidden family history, disease and our ties to the past,” and will have its world premiere in September at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Panushka’s award-winning short films, which include The Sum of Them (1985) and Nighttime Fears and Fantasies: A Bedtime Tale for a Young Girl (1986), investigate what she describes as “internal states of being and the female psyche using stillness and small gestures to describe emotional and spiritual states.”

Visual artist William Kentridge described his own films as “chasing the image,” a creative approach Panushka readily applies to her own work. “I think it’s a perfect phrase to describe a particular sort of art practice,” she says. (Read full story…)