Evan Bode is an award-winning experimental animator, independent filmmaker, mixed media artist, music composer, film editor, and arts educator. Their work has been celebrated at major film festivals across the United States and around the world.
Embracing colorful, theatrical, handcrafted / DIY modes of production, Evan’s short films merge live-action filmmaking with animation and original music. Their original style of storytelling breaks binaries through a playful mix of mediums, departing from realism and blurring the distinction between outer worlds and inner ones.
Evan, who uses any/all pronouns, approaches filmmaking as a personal language to disrupt socially constructed boxes and borders. Their antifascist parables explore themes related to queer gender identity, neurodivergence, and imaginative creative expression as resistance to oppressive norms.
Evan's first film, Thine Own Self, screened at major festivals around the world including Animafest Zagreb, in the company of Academy Award winning animators. In 2021, Evan was one of five filmmakers selected as a winner of the Gotham Institute’s 2021 Student Showcase sponsored by JetBlue and Focus Features, a success featured in Filmmaker Magazine.
Their second film, A Spot for Frog, was met with similar acclaim, including a "Director's Choice Award" at Thomas Edison Film Festival’s 42nd edition and a screening at Outfest L.A.—the largest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world.
Evan graduated from Syracuse University with an MFA in Film in 2023, earning a Chancellor's Citation for Excellence in Graduate Research. In 2020, he graduated with honors from Colorado State University with a B.A. in Communication Studies and minors in Sociology, English, and Film Studies.
In addition to teaching college courses, workshops, and an intensive Summer Film Academy at Syracuse University, Bode has presented artist talks and guest lectures by special invitation at other schools, including Cornell University, Baltimore School for the Arts, the WQED Film Academy, Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, the Dignity for Children Foundation in Malaysia, DePauw University, and OCAD University in Toronto.
In 2024, Evan co-founded Teens with a Movie Camera, a free collaborative filmmaking workshop that seeks to empower the visions and voices of underrepresented teens in the city of Syracuse, NY.
