Workshop med Naomi van Niekerk

Thursday December 4 – Sunday December 14, 2025

Place: Figurteatret i Nordland (aka. Nordland Visual Theatre), Stamsund, Norway

For: Suitable for all artists interested in the art of stop-motion animation

Required: Professional experience in the arts and committed attendance for the full duration of the course.

No previous experience with stop-motion animation is required.

Participants will need to bring their own computers.

Language: English

Max 9 participants

NVT covers travel expenses up to 600€ and housing in Stamsund. No workshop fee. 

Submission deadline: Sep 15, 2025.

Apply via produsent.fin@nfk.no

Application requirements:

Short motivational letter, maximum 150 words

CV

Selected applicants will be invited to the workshop. The selection will be made by NVTs artistic director together with Naomi van Niekerk

Course objectives:

Grains in Motion invites participants to explore the tactile world of sand-animation, a medium which roots in early experimental animation. Shot at 12 frames per second on a light table, this technique captures the fluidity and organic nature of sand as it morphs and evolves, offering a unique way to bring a narrative to life.  This hands-on workshop guides participants through the process of crafting stop-motion animations by manipulating fluid materials such as sand, salt or sugar directly under the camera, revealing the endless creative possibilities within this unique medium.  The objective of this workshop is to create a complete poetic short film through experimentation and play.

Naomi van Niekerk is a visual artist, filmmaker and theatre director. She holds a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and a diploma in the art of puppetry from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette in France. Her filmography includes a series of animated short films based on sensitive interpretations of stark poems by South African authors that speak to her. These films made with sand on an animation table, have been screened globally and received widespread international acclaim such as the ‘Jean-Luc Xiberras’ Award at the Annecy International Film Festival for ‘An Ordinary Blue Monday’ and most recently ‘Best Screenplay’ for ‘Box Cutters’ at the Ottawa International Film Festival.

Her practice as a visual artist involves the reworking of images as etchings and linocuts. Van Niekerk’s engagement with the printing press, for example, is similar to that of a photographer’s way of seeing – identifying, isolating, and capturing impressions of a specific image or moment, and replicating it in physical form. In addition to sand animation, van Niekerk

makes use of scratch-on-film animation, which entails aphysical scratching into the layers of 35mm film. This technique of stop-motion animation, just as slight and deliberate as her process of working with sand, allows for a physical representation of time in the image. Working with film allows her to make sense of the visual narrative in all of its physicality and ephemerality. Van Niekerk is based in Lille, France