Ursula Kurdali

Bassam Kurdali is an animator and teacher whose 2006 short, Elephants Dream, was the first “open movie.” It established the viability of libre tools in a production environment and set precedent by offering its source data under a permissive license for learning, remixing and reuse. Kurdali is continuing to pursue a model of production that invests in commonwealth. They teach, write and lecture in academic institutions and around the world on animation, open production and free software. Raised in Damascus, Kurdali also trained in the US as an electrical and software engineer. Their work—personal and commissioned—has been shown in exhibitions, film festivals and on the fediverse.

Kurdali’s interests are in computer animation, free and open-source software and making film and animation at the end of capitalism. Their work explores contact points between types of reality and is invested in both form and process and in discovering egalitarian substructures for making motion.