Accelerate Session: Animating Africa
We’re very pleased to have worked with animator and experimental filmmaker Mary Martins to put together our next session. Mary will be joined by Comfort Arthur, Charles daCosta and Ng’endo Mukii.
They’ll be exploring how we can raise the visibility of films inspired by African culture and heritage at festivals and galleries, and how resources and funding can create new opportunities for African artists, enriching the global animation industry. And how independent animators in the UK, US and Australia can connect and collaborate with animators based in Africa, fostering shared creativity, skills and cultural exchange.
18:00
Thursday 23 October 2025
Zoom
Follow this link to register.
Speakers
Mary Martins is a British-Nigerian animator and experimental filmmaker from London. She produces multi-layered and mixed media style animated documentaries that combine 16mm live action footage and archive material with more traditional forms of animation. Her ideas focus on social and political themes, documenting the experiences and histories of marginalised communities in the UK, Nigeria and Brazil. Currently, she is working on an animated documentary that explores the historical connection between Nigeria and Brazil through the transatlantic slave trade. She is a Lecturer in Design and Animation practice at the University of Greenwich.
Comfort Arthur is a British-born Ghanaian award-winning animator, illustrator and visual artist. She trained at the Royal College of Arts before moving to Ghana to set up The Comfy Studio. Her short film Black Barbie has been an international hit, screened across the world, and won several awards.
She is the first Ghanaian animator to win the African Academy Movie awards for best animation for her web series I’m Living in Ghana Get Me Out of Here. Comfort has also worked as the Episodic director for CBeebies’ Animated preschool show JoJo and Gran Gran in the United Kingdom.
Charles ‘Staché’ daCosta is an animator and scholar whose work revolves around the intricate interplay of theory and practice in the visual arts and creative industries. His practice involves the creation of designs and quirky shorts that provoke, inspire and confront/challenge known stereotypes [PICKS]. He is currently based in Melbourne.
daCosta has shared his expertise as an Animation educator in universities and training institutions across the globe. In his moments of relaxation, Charles finds solace in reading comics as well as playing the bass and drums. Above all, he holds a profound belief that filmmaking is the ultimate form of puppetry, where storytellers manipulate the strings of imagination and perceptions of motion to fabricate captivating narratives.
Ng’endo Mukii is an Annie Award-winning and British Animation Award-nominated film director. She is most well-known for ‘Enkai,’ an episode on the Disney+ animated anthology, Kizazi Moto.
She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and holds a Master of Arts in Animation from the Royal College of Art.
Her mixed-media and inter-genre approach to filmmaking, particularly focused on the experiences of African women, gives her an incredibly unique visual language and makes her a preeminent voice in animation. She lives and works in Boston as a Professor of the Practice at The Museum School (SMFA) at TUFTS University.
Still: Childhood Memories, Mary Martins