Short Biography and Skills

Hannah Anderson is a Bay Area filmmaker and animator, now a Video Editor at Asana. She holds an MFA in Filmmaking and a BA in Cinema with an emphasis in animation from San Francisco State University. She’s worked on documentaries, fiction films, and tech brand videos, and enjoys directing, art direction, editing, motion graphics, videography, and screenwriting.

She worked as a Videographer for the short documentary Con Moto: The Alexander String Quartet in Poland; it aired on KQED’s Truly California, screened at festivals, and won Best Short Documentary at the Classical Arts Film Festival. Her short fiction film, which she directed, Hui Ying, aired on KQED’s Film School Shorts and screened at festivals including Cannes Short Film Corner, winning Best Screamwriting at Scared for Your Liife Film Festival. She directed, edited, and animated the short documentary Decoding Jean: Secrets of WWII, now a finalist screening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales the as part of the Red Poppy Film Festival.

Technical skills: macOS, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Mocha AE, Cinema 4D Lite, DaVinci Resolve, Dragonframe, Microsoft Office, and Keynote. Camera experience: Canon 5D Mark IV, Sony A7 III, Canon C100 Mark I (documentary work in Poland), and currently Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K.

Director Statement

Besides influences from my past experiences, I have found that film history greatly influences me as an artist and has allowed me to make more informed decisions. I discovered film styles that particularly resonate with me today from my studies of film history, German Expressionism and the blending between Italian Neorealism and Art Cinema (more specifically films by Federico Fellini). What fascinates me about German Expressionism, a highly stylistic film movement, is the way in which the mise-en-scène highlights the significance of the mind in relation to reality. This was also an idea that was cultivated in many of Federico Fellini’s films, the idea that dreams and imagination are a significant part of life, not necessarily having a definitive line between the two. In most of my films I use the story, production design, animation and effects to question this relation between reality and the imagination, which I intend to explore further.

My last two short films focus on two female heroines who find themselves faced with danger and must overcome their fears to persist. I am a fan of Italian Westerns, primarily for the themes, sound design, editing, pacing, score, animated intros, and narratives. This inspired one of my short films, Hui Ying (which just got accepted in the15th SF IndieFestʼs Annual Another Hole in the Head and the 2019 Juggernaut Sci-Fi & Fantasy Film Festival in Chicago). Hui Ying takes different elements from both the Western and Fantasy genres and changes the perspective to an immigrant woman, a perspective that is rarely seen especially in Westerns. In my film, I incorporated animation with live action and did all of the special effects and compositing for the film.

I want to make films, whether they be animated or live action (or both), that explore the female perspective especially in non-conventional roles, challenging pervasive American gender stereotypes. In the current state of underrepresented female storytellers and female protagonists in the film industry, it is my goal to continue to work on my skills as a filmmaker/animator and educator, continuing to share stories with strong, well developed female characters. It is important to me to be a part of that change.