Title
Faculty, Interdisciplinary Arts
Course Areas
animation, film/video
Office Location
Studio 5
Phone Number
207-288-5015
Faculty Website(s)
Education
- MFA, Experimental Animation, California Institute of the Arts (2019)
- BA, Philosophy, Tufts University (2015)
- BFA, Studio Art, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (2015)
Before COA
Before arriving at COA, Melissa spent close to a decade in Los Angeles. She taught at CalArts, Whittier College, Queens College, Cal State LA, and LACHSA. Throughout her career, Melissa has made commissioned animation for documentaries, specializing in handmade animation for films addressing social issues or scientific topics. Melissa also creates independent experimental nonfiction animations, primarily working with hand-drawn palimpsest and stop motion techniques. From 2015-2016, Melissa worked as an animation artist at Dusty Studio in New York City.
For the past several years, Melissa’s animation practice has included working with antique magic lantern projectors. As a lanternist, she creates contemporary expanded animation performances rooted in the history of traditional magic lantern phantasmagoria and scientific lantern lectures. Melissa specializes in creating handmade animated slides based on historic designs. Her performances include experimental documentaries, collaborations with musicians, and phantasmagoria revivals. She spent the majority of 2023-2024 touring/creating magic lantern shows, as well as teaching magic lantern workshops.
Scholarly and Creative Interests
Melissa is an experimental animator, nonfiction filmmaker, and magic lanternist who seeks to acquaint folklores of the past with contemporary culture. In exposing peripheral histories, she aims to unveil the wonder that lies in the shadow of nonfiction, rather than fiction. Her research-based practice engages with the mythification of science and pseudoscience, the preternatural, and histories of phantasmagoria and documentary. Her most recent body of films/performances examined social issues reflected in the culture of cryptozoology.
Melissa’s research focuses on questions of ethics, veracity, and research methodologies in the production of animated documentaries. Her practice as a magic lanternist involves research into various histories of proto-cinematic animation, slide-making, and production techniques.
Melissa is a Vice President of the Magic Lantern Society of the US & Canada and a member of the Society for Animation Studies.
Honors and Awards
Recent awards include:
2024 Science New Wave Fund award from Labocine/The Brandt Jackson Foundation
2024 Damer E. Waddington Red Cabbage Award
2024 Documentary Arts Award at Mimesis Documentary Festival
2023 Dick Balzer Award
2020 Science Sandbox Symbiosis Award at ISFF
Melissa was a 2024 Contributing Artist at the Philosophical Research Society in LA and 2024 Project Space Resident at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. In 2022-2023, she was an Artist in Residence at the Camera Obscura Arts Lab in Santa Monica, CA, the Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics in Fort Bragg, CA, and the REDCAT NOW Festival Residency in LA.
Exhibitions and Performances
Melissa’s films and magic lantern performances have been shown internationally in venues such as The Exploratorium, UnionDocs, Hauser & Wirth LA, Hot Docs, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Baltic Analog Lab, Bob Baker Marionette Theater, Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Philosophical Research Society, and the Harvard History of Science Dept.
Melissa’s commissioned documentary animations have screened on PBS, the BBC, CNN, The New York Times Op-Docs, The MoMA, Nautilus, & TED on Broadway.
Melissa Ferrari
ABOUT
Before COA
Before arriving at COA, Melissa spent close to a decade in Los Angeles. She taught at CalArts, Whittier College, Queens College, Cal State LA, and LACHSA. Throughout her career, Melissa has made commissioned animation for documentaries, specializing in handmade animation for films addressing social issues or scientific topics. Melissa also creates independent experimental nonfiction animations, primarily working with hand-drawn palimpsest and stop motion techniques. From 2015-2016, Melissa worked as an animation artist at Dusty Studio in New York City.
For the past several years, Melissa’s animation practice has included working with antique magic lantern projectors. As a lanternist, she creates contemporary expanded animation performances rooted in the history of traditional magic lantern phantasmagoria and scientific lantern lectures. Melissa specializes in creating handmade animated slides based on historic designs. Her performances include experimental documentaries, collaborations with musicians, and phantasmagoria revivals. She spent the majority of 2023-2024 touring/creating magic lantern shows, as well as teaching magic lantern workshops.
Course Areas
animation, film/video
Personal Website
EDUCATION
- MFA, Experimental Animation, California Institute of the Arts (2019)
- BA, Philosophy, Tufts University (2015)
- BFA, Studio Art, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (2015)
HONORS & AWARDS
INTERESTS
Melissa is an experimental animator, nonfiction filmmaker, and magic lanternist who seeks to acquaint folklores of the past with contemporary culture. In exposing peripheral histories, she aims to unveil the wonder that lies in the shadow of nonfiction, rather than fiction. Her research-based practice engages with the mythification of science and pseudoscience, the preternatural, and histories of phantasmagoria and documentary. Her most recent body of films/performances examined social issues reflected in the culture of cryptozoology.
Melissa’s research focuses on questions of ethics, veracity, and research methodologies in the production of animated documentaries. Her practice as a magic lanternist involves research into various histories of proto-cinematic animation, slide-making, and production techniques.
Melissa is a Vice President of the Magic Lantern Society of the US & Canada and a member of the Society for Animation Studies.
PERFORMANCES
Melissa’s films and magic lantern performances have been shown internationally in venues such as The Exploratorium, UnionDocs, Hauser & Wirth LA, Hot Docs, Ottawa International Animation Festival, Baltic Analog Lab, Bob Baker Marionette Theater, Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Philosophical Research Society, and the Harvard History of Science Dept.
Melissa’s commissioned documentary animations have screened on PBS, the BBC, CNN, The New York Times Op-Docs, The MoMA, Nautilus, & TED on Broadway.
Melissa was a 2024 Contributing Artist at the Philosophical Research Society in LA and 2024 Project Space Resident at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. In 2022-2023, she was an Artist in Residence at the Camera Obscura Arts Lab in Santa Monica, CA, the Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics in Fort Bragg, CA, and the REDCAT NOW Festival Residency in LA.