Columbia College Chicago

12/20/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/20/2024 10:50

Columbia College Chicago's Kate Stransky Celebrates Sundance Selection

Columbia College Chicago's Kate Stransky Celebrates Sundance Selection

Campus Communications Staff / Dec 20, 2024

Kate Stransky (center), production designer and a Columbia adjunct faculty member, works with the team behind the stop-motion short "Inkwo for When the Starving Return," which will be screened at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Left, art director Maya McKibbin, and right, director Amanda Strong (with her child. Photo by Nina Werewka, the film's producer.
"Inkwo for When the Starving Return," a Canadian film made mostly by members of the Indigenous community, tells the story of a gender-shifting warrior, who uses their Indigenous medicine, Inkwo, to protect their community from an unearthed swarm of terrifying creatures.
Kate Stransky, an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, is the production designer for "Inkwo for When the Starving Return," a stop-motion short selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Congratulations to Kate Stransky, an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago and talented production designer, along with the entire team behind the stop-motion short film Inkwo for When the Starving Return. We are thrilled to announce that the film has been selected to be presented at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it will be showcased along with 56 other short films in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Sundance Film Festival is considered by many in the industry to be the ultimate gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new vices and fresh perspectives.

Production designer Kate Stransky is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago

The Festival will take place from January 23-February 2, 2025, with a selection of titles available online from January 30-February 2, 2025.

"As proud as I am of this beautiful film, I was super surprised that we got in considering there were over 11,000 submission," Stransky says.

The creatives involved with "Inkwo for When the Starving Return," a Canadian film, include director, screenwriter, and producer Amanda Strong (Emmy nominee for the PBSKids show "Molly in Denali"); screenwriters Bracken Hanuse Corlett and Richard Van Camp; and producers Maral Mohammadian and Nina Werewka. It stars members of the indigenous community, including Paulina lexis ("Reservation Dogs") and Tantoo Cardinal ("Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Dances with Wolves").

"Looking at how hard our team worked - especially our director Amanda Strong, producer Nina Werewka, and art director Maya McKibbin, this honor is well-deserved," Stransky says.

The short tells the story of Dove, a gender-shifting warrior, who uses their Indigenous medicine, Inkwo, to protect their community from an unearthed swarm of terrifying creatures.

Stansky teaches film and animation at Columbia. She worked on the film during the pandemic, flying back and forth between Chicago and Vancouver. From Chicago over Zoom, Stransky then oversaw the full art department and fabrication team as they constructed props and sets in Vancouver.

"It was a Canadian production funded by the National Film Board of Canada, and I was one of only a few non-Canadians on the crew. Working on it was pretty crazy considering I was commuting back and forth and working remotely in between the trips," she says. "But it was worth it, and I'm so proud to see it celebrated at Sundance."

Stransky plans to meet up with everyone from the film as well as her family at Sundance.

"A bunch of the crew from Canada will be there, and I'm looking forward to celebrating with them," she says. "And I'm excited to finally have my Chicago and my Canadian families meet."

Get a sneak peek of this special film by watching the trailer.