Karmic Not is Going to Berlin! - January 21, 2026

Signe Baumane
5 days ago
3 min read

Dear Backers and Friends,

Happy New Year!

Karmic Knot, Signe Baumane’s new animated feature film, has been invited to the Berlinale Co-Production Market, one of the biggest and most important film marketplaces in the world. Signe and Sturgis will travel to Berlin February 14-17 and join Latvian Producers Dominiks Jarmakovičs and Roberts Vinovskis along with German Producer Fabian Driehorst to meet with international producers, sales agents and distributors. Karmic Knot is one of 35 film projects from 27 different countries to be selected. It’s a great opportunity to find new partners to help us make the film and get it seen. We will let you know what happens!

In the meantime, the Karmic Knot Team has been busy. Here is what we have been up to since our last update to you:

In October we were working on the Professor set, but hadn’t shot it yet. The scene is now photographed, animated, pencil shaded, scanned, and sent off to the Latvian Team for coloring and compositing. The portraits of famous male scientists and the anatomical charts on the opposite wall were created by Art Assistant Maya Bond. The characters in the scene are voiced by Emma Kenney and Steven Hauck.

In this scene we had two stop-motion camera moves. Using our stop-motion rail we took single shots as we pulled the camera back in 250 evenly spaced increments creating smooth pull-back movements. Previously, we had difficulties with our lights flickering on these stop-motion shots because of small voltage fluctuations that are part of our electrical system. But our good friend John Donnelly gifted us a voltage stabilizer which magically eliminates all flickering. Now each time we shoot stop-motion we thank John - and for good measure Signe’s Latvian gods - for John’s knowledge and generosity!

John Donnelly’s Voltage Stabilizer takes in our fluctuating electricity and outputs the exact same voltage at all times. It’s clunky, heavy, hums, but works perfectly!

Above is the Poetry Club set in a dank basement where you can see the feet of pedestrians passing by through the street-level windows. There are two scenes in the Poetry Club. The first - voiced by Cindy Cheung, Gracie Lawrence and Steven Boyer - is fully animated and in the hands of the Latvian Team.

Later in the story, the space is cluttered and worn down. Cindy Cheung, Gracie Lawrence and Kasjan Wilson voice this scene. It is fully animated, shaded and ready for the Latvian Team.

This is the Matiss set, a poet’s garret apartment, which we have just finished photographing. A neon light blinks from the window for each of the 10 shots in the scene - stop-motion again (thank you John Donnelly!). The scene is voiced by Gracie Lawrence and Steven Boyer.

We are making many sets to prepare them for shooting. Here are some of our creations for the upcoming Witch Doctor set. The scene is voiced by Marylouise Burke and Emma Kenny:

Artists Avery Vang (above) and Nicole Altan made numerous clay miniatures. We plan to fill the Witch Doctor’s house with many strange props.

Nicole paints two miniature portraits for the Witch Doctor scene, a nude and a saint. Nicole is Mongolian-American, so we asked her to paint a rug for the Witch Doctor set inspired by her Mongolian heritage.

Signe wanted a piano for the Witch Doctor set. Sturgis built one out of wood, Nicole covered it in telephone-book paper (good for fine texturing) and painted it - including the black and white keys.

Lead set-artist Julia Mukai texturing the walls of the Witch Doctor set at an early stage and a later one. She also organizes and scans all the finished animation and sends it to the Latvian Team.

Several time a week Signe meets with the Latvian Team. On the upper left of the screen are the Heads of the Compositing Department Darja Āva and Georgs Āva with Producer Dominiks Jarmakovičs in between them. The compositor Team is in charge of seamlessly placing the animated drawings within the photos of the background sets. Upper right are Signe and Sturgis. At the bottom is Head of the Coloring Department Anete Matvejeva.

Recently, a Latvian TV program, RE!, filmed some of our Team’s activity at Studio Locomotive in Riga. We took a few screenshots of the footage. Above is Lead Producer Dominiks Jarmakovičs.