Ann Marie Fleming is an award-winning Canadian independent filmmaker, writer and artist, born in Okinawa, of Chinese and Australian parentage. Her film work incorporates various techniques: animation, documentary, experimental, dramatic, and primarily deals with themes of family, history and memory, in a continuing media critique.
Her feature-length animated film, Window Horses screened at major festivals, earning accolades around the world. Window Horses stars AMF’s iconic avatar Stickgirl who in this story plays Rosie Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh), a young poet who learns about family, peace and forgiveness when she travels to Shiraz, Iran to share her poetry.
In 2010, AMF did her first adaptation of someone else’s work: an animated short based on the illustrated memoir by Bernice Eisenstein, I Was A Child of Holocaust Survivors, with the Toronto and Montreal offices of the NFB. It was on the TIFF “Top Ten” list of films for 2010 and won best animated film at the Reel2Real Youth Film Festival and best short from the Women’s International Film & Television (WIFTI) Showcase.
AMF did a segment for the CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera’s website, interpreting a segment of the life and times of Sook-Yin Lee. In 2010, she also made a PSA for on atrial fibrilosis for the heart & stroke foundation.
In 2009, she made a little animated web-series for Discovery USA’s Planetgreen.com called My Place, where Stickgirl tries her best to come up with Green solutions to everyday problems.
In the years before that, there were many other films. Check out Ann Marie’s web site for more.
Currently, AMF is working on several projects including a dramatic feature-length script of the life and loves of her great grandfather, Shanghai Follies, and Can I Get a Witness?, a live-action/animated feature that takes place in the near future, where the world’s population collectively agrees to end life at age fifty to end poverty and save the planet. She received the 2020 WIDC Cannes Fellowship Award to pitch these projects at Cannes’ first-ever fully online festival and market. She is also developing an urban planning app riffing on her animated musical project, Big Trees, about real estate in Vancouver, a markerless AR app for Shanghai Follies.
Awards & Nominations
(selected)
2019 Artistic Achievement Award, Women In Film & Television Vancouver Spotlight Awards
Window Horses (animated feature film)
2017 Best Animated Feature Film, Asia Pacific Screen Award
2017 Jury Prize, Bucheon International Animation Festival, Korea
2017 Audience Award, AnimaSyros International Animation Festival, Greece
2017 Best Canadian Film, Association of Canadian Online Critics
2017 Humanitarian Award, RiverRun Festival, North Carolina
2016 Best Animated Film, Gijon International Film Festival, Barcelona
2016 Best Canadian and Best B.C. Feature Film, Vancouver International Film Festival
2016 Best Canadian Screenplay, Vancouver Critic’s Award
2016 Nominee, Best Canadian Feature Film, Toronto International Film Festival
2011 Innovation Award, Women In Film & Television Vancouver Spotlight Awards