Episode
15: Under the Pergola with Amanda Bonaiuto
- Podcast
- The Animator’s Friend
- Published
- Oct 15, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 5456
- Processing state
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Summary
You can find Amanda, me, and her dog Bacca under the pergola, discussing our shared provenance which includes italianess, shyness, and punkness. Her film Confetti is available online for the first time through Director's Notes and her and fellow animator James Thacher have just started their own studio called Magician with a screening coming up at Ridgewood Community Cinema on 11/2/25 at 7pm. Amanda Bonaiuto is an animation director, artist, and assistant professor of Illustration at Parsons School of Design. Her films have screened at film festivals and institutions globally, including Slamdance Film Festival, Annecy International Animation Festival, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, among others. Her work has been recognized by press outlets such as It’s Nice That, The New Yorker, Vimeo, and NPR. She holds an MFA in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts, and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She offers workshops, mentorship, and animation publications through a collaborative project called Magician Studio. Amanda uses animation to experiment with choreographic movement, relational ruptures, and the ever present tension between bodies and space. Her work examines experiences of turmoil in mundane spaces; the bedroom, the funeral home, the emotional dance created through chains of physical association. She is fascinated by the porousness of lived experience. Her films consider how our environments exert influence as we reciprocally construct our own world. She hosts Animator Picnics in NYC several times a year (one forthcoming in October). Reach out if you’d like to be added to the email list: [email protected] Links to points of discussion: Amanda Bonaiuto's Instagram The Animator'…