Ball Lightning: Educating While Producing an Animated Film
Virtual Presentation Sunday, April 13, 2025 at 11:00 am PST, 2:00 pm EST
Ball Lightning is a nearly 12-minute experimental fine art, frame-by-frame 2D animation. Both a memoir and biography, it is a personal narrative about a child's love for a surrogate parent and that parent's love in return. It tells the story of Gusta, a refugee forced to give away her infant daughter as she fled East Germany at the end of WWII, who becomes the motherly caregiver to the narrator. She serves as a role model and example of survival, resilience and kindness. During this Salon, Lesley University Associate Professor Catriona Baker and the Ball Lightning team will talk about the experience of creating the film. They will discuss how the production process provided a practical learning experience that affected the professional growth for all members of the team and illustrate how the animation medium and pipeline builds community and collaboration.
Join the session here!
Lesley University Associate Professor Catriona Baker's film, Ball Lightning, was created in collaboration with Lesley, and has won “Best Animation” in the Brussels World Film Festival and the Chicago Filmmakers Awards.
Catriona Baker, Associate Professor of Animation and Illustration at Lesley University's College of Art and Design, is a fine art experimental animator, book artist, and painter. Her work focuses on issues of social justice such as sexual assault, domestic violence, trauma, immigration, and women empowerment. Her work explores the visual juxtaposition between traditional mediums and digital processes. Her Animations range in mediums from 3D, 2D digital to hand drawn/painted frame by frame animation.
Catriona holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College in Studio Art: printmaking, a BFA from Maine College of Art in painting and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in animation and painting. Her works have been shown nationally and internationally in screenings, galleries, and corporate collections. Her animations have been internationally recognized with an International Platinum Pixie and two International CINDY (Cinema in Industry) awards.