Marissa Vazhappilly is a stop-motion generalist, mixed media animator, and storyteller. They are a senior Animation BFA Candidate at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work relies on heavy materiality and traditional animation techniques in order to build narrative homes in response to questions of distance, loneliness, and otherness.
Their work spans short films, music-videos, games, interactive experiments, and poetry. Her visual poem and material experiment You are Praying was presented as part of the 2023 Stick in the Dirt Student Animation festival and won the Best Craft/Technique Award, and she participated in the FIAF Animation Jam in 2023. She also collaborated with the band LemonTech to create a music video for their song Heartbreak in Hawaii. They are currently working on their undergraduate thesis film, A Tharavad is an Ancestral Home.
Marissa Vazhappilly is also a youth educational organizer in Texas and works to make diverse stories more accessible to young people across America. They hope to create films and interactive projects that celebrate and elevate stories of imperfect girls - much like themself