My Love Affair with Marriage
The second-place 2020 NYWIFT Ravenal Foundation Feature Film Grant was presented to Signe Baumane for My Love Affair with Marriage.
My Love Affair With Marriage is an animated feature film by Signe Baumane created for an adult audience. The film uses music and science to examine the biological chemistry of love and gender, as well as the societal pressures on an individual to conform to social mores.
My Love Affair With Marriage is currently in production and will be completed Spring 2021.
Signe Baumane was born and raised in Latvia when it was still part of the Soviet Union. At age 14, she began publishing short stories. At 16 she won poetry reciting competitions. At 18 she was singing and dancing with the folk group Skandenieki. Signe received a BA in Philosophy from Moscow State University. After graduating she started to work at Riga’s Animated Film Studio as a cel painter and later as a writer, director and designer. Signe directed three animated shorts in Latvia before moving to New York. There she worked for independent animator Bill Plympton as art director and production manager. In 1998, Signe received her U.S. green card as an ‘extraordinary ability alien’ and began making films at her own studio. In 2005 she became a U.S. citizen.
Signe has written, directed and animated 16 shorts and one feature film, many of them with a strong female point of view. She believes passionately that animation is a perfect medium for adult storytelling. Her films collectively have screened at over 560 film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Venice and Karlovy Vary. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow in Film. Rocks in My Pockets (2014), Signe’s first animated feature film, is based on true events involving five women of Signe’s family, including herself, and their battles with suicide and depression. It played internationally at 150 film festivals, was distributed in the U.S. by Zeitgeist Films, and has been screened by many colleges and mental health organizations.
Learn more about her work at www.signebaumane.com.
