Festival Information

Let me welcome you to the 2017 BFA/MFA FVNMAS Festival, held annually at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Over the course of this week, you will have the chance to view the work of more than forty young artists across a wide range of moving-image genres, forms, and practices. Like their peers exhibiting in the BFA and MFA gallery shows, these students are engaged in a rite of passage that marks the culmination of their arts education and their official entry into the arena of public presentation. For these moving-image artists, this Festival entails the opportunity to see their work projected large and to share their visions with an audience of friends, family members, fellow students, faculty and staff, and the general public.

Given the ubiquity of screens in contemporary culture, there will be a multitude of destinations for the works shown in these programs. Some of them will be festival- bound or encounter audiences online, others will form the basis of more ambitious projects, while all of them will serve to showcase the creativity, perseverance, and commitment of these young artists.

So please join us in congratulating this extraordinary group of students as they celebrate the completion of SAIC’s demanding fine art degree programs and begin the next chapters of their lives and careers.

Bruce Jenkins Chair of FVNMA, SAIC May 2017

The 2017 FVNMAS Festival is dedicated to Lisa Kuivinen (1995-2016)

For Lisa Kuivinen

Lisa steps into your path in a quiet forest Startling you, taking your breath away, and then you Speak
oh, thank goodness, it is you.
Lisa paints a self-portrait, then again
From another vantage point, a painting,
an animation, comic panels, a song, a dance. Each page showing Another twist in the plot. Stacks of paper marked by a singular hand.

Lives come with very different page counts, Some are heavy bound volumes.
Others a precious book of poetry
That you can hold in your hand.
Wrap your fingers softly around.
Thank you, Lisa Kuivinen. from Helsinki to Manila, For all your light and dark, and color in between.

From Chris
(Chris Sullivan, Professor, Film, Video, New Media and Animation)

The FVNMAS Festival 2017 will take place during the evenings of Monday May 8, Wednesday May 10, Thursday May 11, and Friday May 12. Tickets are complimentary and will be available each day at the box office, which opens one hour before the first program of the day. Please check program listings for specific showtimes.