Joanna Priestley’s whimsical short films cover a variety of subjects, both social and personal, Dew Line (2005) is her most recent work.

Lastly, Dew Line (2005) represents Priestley’s growing experimentation with computer-based animation. Using Flash, the film grew out of Priestley’s interest in botany and a series of photographs she took for the Oregon Zoo while camping at an abandoned radar station in the Arctic Circle of Alaska. The title of the film therefore refers to the lines and shapes created by condensed moisture, as well as the DEW (Distant Early Warning) stations built during the Cold War. (The film was made possible by a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.)

Priestley is the founding president of ASIFA-Northwest. Her production company, Priestley Motion Pictures (www.PrimoPix.com), has an active apprenticeship program and she teaches animation at the Art Institute of Portland. In addition to festival screenings and retrospectives at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, her work has screened on both PBS and the BBC.

All in all, if you are an animation lover, and if you don’t mind someone calling you that to your face, then I whole-heartedly recommend picking up Priestley’s anthology. Either that, or encourage your local library to purchase a copy so you can borrow it (with the added benefit of allowing the rest of the community to see it, as well). It is the Golden Rule of Animation: support others in their craft and journey, as much as we would hope others to do the same for us.

Fighting Gravity and Relative Orbits: Films by Joanna Priestly, 2004, Primo Pictures, 67 min. and 79 min, respectively; $20.00 each; $35.00 for two-disc set. Available at iwww.primopix.com and at select independent retailers.

Greg Singer is an animation welfare advocate, eating in Los Angeles.