A director, designer, illustrator and animator, Chrystene has worked extensively in the world of live performance and puppetry, co-founding Bindlestiff Studio and Riot Act Theatre Company in San Francisco, and spending 20 years in the San Francisco special effects industry fabricating puppets and effects for films like Nightmare Before Christmas.
Chrystene moved to Saskatchewan to make Sisu, an award-winning feature film about a real-life Depression-era prairie ‘mad’ shipbuilder. During a year-long residency at the Saskatchewan Filmpool, she guided 25 local artists making their first puppet films, and in 2013 co-launched IPUFF, Regina’s bi-annual International Puppet Underground Film Festival.
Adept in numerous disciplines including painting, theatre, film and animation, Chrystene received the 2013 Lt. Governor’s Award for Leadership in the Arts, and currently works with senior citizens, guiding them in re-envisioning their dreams and memories through life journals and memory boxes. Werner Herzog once shook Chrystene’s hand, saying that her hand-processed film, ‘She Had Died,’ starring a goose contemplating death, was ‘very strange’ and that he liked it ‘very much.’
Moxie Films is a small company that produces beautiful art from a variety of disciplines
Chrystene Ells
Berny Hi
Filmmaker, performer, and visual artist Berny Hi is endlessly fascinated by nature and aspects of the human experience: beauty, sensation, and our unique perception of time and space.
Through Artist’s Residencies with Saskatchewan organizations and schools, Berny aspires to support unheard voices through creative, collaborative adventures and manual, hands-on processes.
Never bored, Berny is a founding member of two artist-run non-profits: The Prairie Puppet Underground, creating and exhibiting visionary puppetry, and The Cabinet Collective, an umbrella organization dedicated to city-wide festivals that cross-pollinate multiple art disciplines through a common theme. He finds that there is simply not enough time in a day.
He strives for a smooth, flowing web experience for creative clients.