Announcing Dustin Grella as the
2024 VAF Keynote Speaker!
Dustin Grella is an animator and documentary filmmaker whose work attempts to glean glimpses of colorful insight into the seemingly mundane. His films have screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and won the Walt Disney Award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His film "Prayers for Peace" screened at almost two hundred festivals worldwide and won over forty awards. He has written and mailed himself a letter every day for the past twenty years and has over 7000 sealed letters neatly filed and categorized. He is currently in production of the Animation Hotline, a series of micro-animations where he uses crowd-sourced voicemail messages for content.
Since 2009, Dustin has been the founder and director of Dusty Studio, which is an animation design and production house specializing in a pastel on slate technique, also called chalkboard animation. Since 2009 they have created animated segments for feature films and documentaries, short films, commercials, explainer videos and fine art installations.
In-house projects include over two hundred episodes of the "Animation Hotline" which is a series of animated shorts that invite anonymous callers to leave a voicemail message that is then turned into a video.
Dusty Studio’s internationally award winning work has been screened at Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals, Museum of Modern Art and New York Times to name a few. Clients include Zentropa Films, Harvard Business Review, HP, HHMI, Freeform, J Crew, Facebook, Open Society Foundation, Novartis and Pfizer.
VT Animation Festival 2024
The Vermont Animation Festival is proud to celebrate our eighth year! We will kick off this years’ screenings, workshops, and artist talks on Friday, March 22nd. 2024 events include workshops for both beginner and experienced animators, a screening of student films, and an Artist Talk by our Keynote Speaker, Dustin Grella.
The Vermont Animation Festival is hosted by Vermont State University - Lyndon in partnership with Catamount Arts.
Submission Guidelines
We welcome submissions of animated films, especially from students and emerging animators. Prizes are awarded in the following categories: Best Student Film, Best Supershort, Best Film from a Vermont Animator, Best Use of Traditional Media, and Best Overall.
- Films must be at least 10 seconds long
(repeated loops will be considered).
- Credits should not exceed the length of the film.
- All content that is created by artists other than the submitter must be credited appropriately.
Submissions will open on January 1st, 2024, and close at 11:59PM on March 10th, 2024. The link to our submission form will be posted here on 1/1/2024.
Get in Touch!
For questions regarding the Vermont Animation Festival please contact
Kate Renner, Assistant Professor of Visual Art