Ball Lightning
Director: Trina Baker
United States, 2025, 12 min
Shooting Format:NA
Festival Year:2026
Category:Animation
Genres:Drama, Experimental, Love Story, Woman, History
Cast:Trina Baker
Crew:Script Editor: Kelley Smith; Sound Design: Robert Gifford; Animation: Aimee Ham, Hanah Cincotta, Serena Bartlett, Will Machado, Ali Houraibi, Trina Baker; Storyboard Editor: Becky Bettencourt; Preproduction: Alyson Wyman, Isaac Donnelly, Hannah Melon, Sarah Clifford, Joseph Corcoran, Peyton Thompson, Sabrina Crockton; End Credits: Maddie Gassel, Miles Crusberg Rosen
Email:cgbakerart@gmail.com
Synopsis
Ball Lightning is the true story of a refugee who fled the personal and social effects of Soviet run East Germany after the end of WWII and immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. The story is told through the eyes of the surrogate daughter that she raised after she was forced to give away her own infant daughter as the iron curtain rose. Gusta serves as an example of survival, kindness and the fortitude of human resilience. The film is dedicated to her lost daughter, Esther, a reminder that the children separated from families because of war are never forgotten by those who love them.
Trailer
About the director
Trina Baker is an animator and visual artist whose work blends hand‑drawn and digital processes to explore themes of social justice, including gender‑based violence, feminist agency, and immigration. Her animation "Every Two Minutes" has earned an International Platinum Pixie Award and two International CINDY Awards. She is an Associate Professor of Animation at Lesley University College of Art and Design and holds an M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Filmmaker's note
Ball Lightning is a dual memoir and biography. The film is based on a true story, and is a personal narrative told from my perspective as both a young child and as an adult reflecting on the researched history of the main character, Gusta a 65 year old immigrant who left Soviet occupied East Germany in the 1960's. I was inspired to create this film during the COVID-19 lock down when I realized that the most compassionate person in my life had survived the pandemic of 1918 – and much more – emerging as the loving mother illustrated in my film. The format for this film is frame-by-frame animation, with a kinetic, tactile approach towards the materials to highlight place and time, meant to evoke the process of combining fragmented memories into a singular, cohesive narrative.
Ball Lightning combines traditional mediums such as oil paint, gouache, and watercolor paintings with computer-generated platforms, including TV Paint, Photoshop, and Procreate. The chosen medium for this film directly reflects its dual function as memoir and biography. The memoir portion is depicted from a child’s perspective and is meant to evoke a visual diary (or, sketchbook) to highlight the ephemeral quality of childhood memory. The hand drawn, pose-to-pose animation on watercolor backgrounds evokes the innocence associated with childhood. This light, gestural and colorful style stands in direct contrast to the heavier, oil paint on panels that are used to represent Gusta’s former life in Germany. The straight-ahead oil on panel animation is shot against a wall, to allow gravity to affect the images and show the kinetic drip of paint. This highlights the purposeful use of paint as a physical, tactile, and uncontrollable medium, meant to emulate the chaos and trauma of Gusta’s life.