An artist, filmmaker, and scholar in the critical art history and philosophy of Experimental Animation, Janeann Dill earned her Ph.D. (magna cum laude) from the Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinare Studien (EGS) in Switzerland, and her M.F.A. in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts, School of Film and Video where Jules Engel was her Mentor. Dill was also awarded a Certificate in Film Direction from the University of California Los Angeles; and her MA and BA in Fine Arts (Painting) from Vanderbilt University.
When living in France as an Artist-In-Resident for the American Center In Paris, Dill was inspired to extend the boundaries of her creative work as an abstract painter into film. She describes her work as “painting in time.”
“I was walking from the Pompidou Center to Les Halles on the plaza of the Fountain des Innocents and had a vision of my paintings moving in time. My artistic research had consistently wrapped itself around the synthesis of dreamlike atmospheres with harsh angular realities. In that moment I realized the imperative to marry the elements of ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’ in my paintings to a time-based art. My interest in provoking narrative through abstraction had expanded into a revelatory experience of a deep and abiding desire to move concepts through the fourth dimension to create a broader spectrum of work. I, literally, saw my paintings move in time and I imagined this was called ‘film’ … or is that called ‘animation’?”
Dill’s oeuvre in experimental animation is realized in a 16mm, black and white experimental film, Paris Is A Woman. This film has screened internationally, been exhibited as a monumental installation in Urban Lightworks projection on a 140′ exterior wall of a city building, and broadcast on the premiere program of scanLINE, PBS. Paris Is A Woman has been screened internationally and across venues of museum exhibitions and film festivals, including the Bass Museum of Art in Miami, curated by Elizabeth Hall; Agnes Scott Art Gallery, curated by Richard Gess, NO AGENDA BUT THEIR OWN; California Institute of the Arts’ SCREAM, curated, New Music; in Switzerland, Italy, France, Japan, New York and Los Angeles film festivals. Paris Is A Woman was also awarded Best Directorial Debut in the Short Film Category and Best Experimental Short Film.
As one of the original team of interviewers of holocaust survivors, Dill was recruited to join the staff of Steven Spielberg’s non-profit, visual history archive, Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, where she was one of twelve founding members of the historical cataloguing department. Professionally, she worked as an Animation Timing Director within the industry during her nine years living in Los Angeles. The daughter of two academics, Dr. Dill has numerous years of experience as a faculty in higher education and international conference presenter of her research in the visual arts.
Dill’s films are widely exhibited in the USA, and internationally in Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Croatia, Ivory Coast and Switzerland. She has been awarded grants from the Ahmanson Foundation and the Irvine Foundation, and was one of ten American recipients of an Independent Media Grant awarded by the Annenberg Foundation. In addition to her extended artist residency at the American Center in Paris in painting, Dill received three Artist-In-the-Schools Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
