When I first met Signe Baumane, she had already produced 15 short films of her own and was planning her first animated feature film, ‘Rocks in my Pockets’. Meanwhile, she has made a second full-length film, ‘My Love Affair with Marriage’. Her films are based on personal experience, and she often narrates them in her own voice.
Does that make her films women’s films? Maybe that, too, but actually, they are films about humans and their abysmal depths. Because with her animation, she succeeds in lifting the stories to a universal level. Signe Baumane observes and reflects incredibly well: her own life, her fellow human beings, and she knows like no other how to convey these observations and experiences to the audience. As a result, after watching one of her films, you leave the cinema not only wiser, but with new knowledge about yourself, too.
Signe Baumane studied philosophy in Moscow, then worked for an animation studio in Riga and moved to New York City in 1996, where she first worked for Bill Plympton while continuing to realise her own films. Until she later founded her own studio and, for many years, tackled the realisation of her feature-length films with unbridled energy, perseverance, and creativity.
For her inspiring work, the ITFS honours Signe Baumane with the Honorary Trickstar. She will be presenting a programme of short films and her feature-length films will be screened.
Annegret Richter