Animating the Subconscious

Portuguese director and Fellow João Gonzalez will present his three short films: “The Voyager” (2019), “Nestor” (2019), and “Ice Merchants” (2022), the first of which will feature a live piano performance by the director and composer himself. The screening will be followed by a discussion between Gonzalez and his fellow Fellow the poet Lynn Xu.

João Gonzalez is a Portuguese director, animator, illustrator, and musician with a classical training in piano. His short film “Ice Merchants,” which premiered in Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and was awarded the Critics Week Jury Prize for Best Short Film in competition, was also the first ever Portuguese film to receive an OSCAR® nomination, and is currently the most awarded Portuguese film of all time, having received more than 150 international awards. João has a great interest in combining his musical background with his artistic practice as composer and occasional instrumentalist in all the films he makes. In 2023, he was invited to become a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving as a voter for the yearly OSCARS® Awards.

Born in Shanghai, Lynn Xu is a poet and Assistant Professor of Writing at the School of the Arts. She is the author of Debts & Lessons (2013) and And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (2022), selected for the Poetry Center Book Award, and co-translator of Pee Poems by Yang Licai (aka Lao Yang). She has performed multidisciplinary works at 300 South Kelly Street, the Guggenheim Museum, the Renaissance Society, and Rising Tide Projects, and her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. She coedits Canarium Books.