温迪·蒂尔比，Director, Screenwriter, Animator (b. January 1, 1960 Edmonton, Alberta) In a country that is particularly adept at nurturing animation talent, Wendy Tilby stands out as an extraordinary artist whose work has received international attention and acclaim. Her films are rich, meaningful stories of everyday life defined by long technical processes, artistic invention and beauty. In 1999, Tilby co-directed with Amanda Forbis When the Day Breaks (1999), the tale of a pig named Ruby. The film won several awards including the FIPRESCI prize at the Venice Film Festival for the film’s “outstanding cinematic way of portraying human emotions.” Tilby was educated at the University of Victoria, where she studied visual arts and literature. She had aspirations to be a writer, and, later, to be a documentary filmmaker but an evening course in animation changed her direction. She enrolled at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, where she majored in film and animation, graduating in 1986. In search of new talent, the National Film Board’s animation studio bought distribution rights to Tilby’s student film Tables of Content and Tilby was invited to Montreal to join the studio. She created Strings in 1991, which became her first international hit. She used stop-action film and images she painted directly on panes of glass (a technique employed by other artists such as Caroline Leaf, a mentor at the NFB) to create a rich and muted tapestry. The story simultaneously follows a woman preparing for a bath and her upstairs neighbour rehearsing with his string trio. Tilby alternates the focus of the story back and forth between the two apartments. And her string motif is successful in suggesting the bond between them. The film received an Oscar® nomination as well a Genie for best animated film. Tilby’s second film, When the Day Breaks, shares a number of common elements with Strings including Tilby’s interest in exploring the connections, however intimate or quotidian, th