Benjamin Crowell
writer - director - animator - actor
Benjamin Crowell is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened across the globe, including the Cannes Film Festival, the Royal Albert Hall, and Perth Artwalk.
A graduate of CalArts’ Experimental Animation Program, he works primarily in stop-motion, live-action, time-lapse photography, and traditional animation, often combining techniques to tell traditional stories in non-traditional ways.
His versatile work background involves his other passions that inspire his films–special needs/disability communities, plants, fungi, animals, actors, and Indigenous communities.
If you can’t get ahold of him, he’s likely out in the wilderness, spreading native plant seeds and eating the invasive ones with the strangest strangers he can find.
CHAWUMP
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This film is not yet accessible to the public. It was created in collaboration with Dennis Garcia, Chair of Elders for the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, whose unceded ancestral Lands CalArts sits on, and is the intellectual property of this group. Access has been granted for this special circumstance for portfolio and potential job acquisition purposes. Thank you for your discretion.
Behind the scenes video below.
WITH LIGHT
(in production)
Teaser for an upcoming stop motion film. After his untimely passing, a father's ghost travels with Thunder Beings through a Spirit World to fulfill a promise to his daughter. Spirit and Song, Thunder and Regret, Light and Matter, Love and Apology. Inspired by a true event.
In-progress preview of character animation from the opening act of "With Light."
Process photos and set construction video below.
CLONELINESS
In the process of being adapted into a feature-length roadtrip dramedy about relationships, grief, and meaning in life and death. Exploring what it is to be a conscious and mortal pile-o-flesh within an infinite universe, featuring many dumb jokes.
Watch the short film below.
4-Told
Spanning four movements, 4-told asks the participant to consider the relationship of colonization to climate change:
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A Distant Bell (European contact, Native prophecies)
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Occupation (Indigenous displacement, erasure)
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Extraction (environmental violence, consumption)
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Indigenous Futures (ecological stasis and balance)
Composition, Chad S. Hamill/čnaq’ymi // Film and Animation, Benjamin Crowell // Welcome Song, President Rudy Ortega and Vice President Mark Villasenor // Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians