Watch Me Jumpstart

Watch Me Jumpstart is a love letter and a jab to the ribs—part memoir, part field guide—from the Artistic Director who spent three decades peering behind the curtain of the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Chris Robinson has watched the medium mutate from spliced film cans and ¾-inch tapes to links and torrents of digital files; from a handful of global showcases to a crowded calendar of festivals; from outsider, DIY voices to an industry that can smooth every rough edge—and sometimes sand away the soul.

With his trademark dry bite and disarming honesty, Robinson traces the collisions that shaped his life in animation: the punky spirit that got him hired, the near-disasters that almost sank him, the programs that soared, and the friendships forged at 2 a.m. over cheap wine and weirder shorts. He doesn’t romanticize the past or panic about the future; he simply records what it feels like to stand at the crossroads—again and again—while the art form reinvents itself (AI panic included), and argues for the stubborn, personal, beautifully impractical films that keep the medium alive.

Jumpstart is for animators and students, for programmers and critics, and for anyone who ever fell for a film that didn’t care about permission. It’s a backstage pass to the decisions, arguments, and small miracles that turn thousands of submissions into a festival—and a reminder that animation isn’t a genre or a market segment. It’s a messy, human conversation that never stops moving, even when the projector jams.

Chris Robinson is a Canadian writer and the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF). A leading figure in the animation world, Robinson has received several prestigious honors, including the Animafest Zagreb Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies (2020) and the Prix René Jodoin (2022) for his contributions to Canadian animation. Widely regarded as "one of the most stylistically original and provocative experts in the history of animation," Robinson’s influence extends across writing, curation, and film.

He first gained attention through his eclectic and influential magazine column, Animation Pimp, which was later adapted into a book of the same name. Robinson’s most recent animation writing includes Earmarked for Collision, the first ever history of collage animation. Dreaming a Way (of) Life, a book about the legendary collage filmmaker, Lewis Klahr, and Raw Outrage – The Films of Phil Mulloy.

In addition to his writing on animation, Robinson also wrote the Award-winning animated short, Lipsett Diaries (2010) directed by Theodore Ushev. He recently completed the illustrated novel My Balls are Killing Me with artist, Andreas Hykade, and wrote the script for the live action feature, Idling, directed by Theodore Ushev.