
Tommy Pallotta
Production
Biography
Tommy Pallotta is a storyteller who creatively blends technology with filmmaking, animation, and interactivity. Microsoft Research recognized his penchant for innovation where he led a research team to create and design interactive, animated storytelling experiences. Pallotta also directed the first machinima music video, In the Waiting Line, and the rotoscoped MTV Breakthrough video Destiny, both for the band Zero 7. He has produced several short animated films that garnered numerous awards, including Snack and Drink, which is now part of a permanent collection in the New York Museum of Modern Art. Tommy first connected Richard Linklater with animation when he produced the award-winning feature film Waking Life. He followed up with Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, starring Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. He then directed the Emmy-nominated transmedia thriller, Collapsus. Most recently he co-directed the feature documentary/ animation hybrid: Last Hijack. The interactive companion of Last Hijack won an International Digital Emmy Award.
Known For

After getting into a near fatal car accident, Alma discovers she has a new relationship with time and uses this ability to find out the truth about her father’s death.
Undone

An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
A Scanner Darkly

Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.
Waking Life

Highlighting one of the most innovative American directors, this film reveals the path traveled by the auteur from his small-town Texas roots to his warm reception on the awards circuit. Long before he directed Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s intense desire to create fueled his work outside the Hollywood system. Rather than leave Texas, he chose to collaborate with like-minded artists crafting modest, low-budget films in a DIY style. His ability to showcase realistic characters and tell honest stories was evident from his films, and others soon took notice of his raw talent.
Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny

A man narrates stories of his life as a 10-year-old boy in 1969 Houston, weaving tales of nostalgia with a fantastical account of a journey to the moon.
Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood

Jon, a first-time filmmaker, finds himself in Lansing, Michigan to present his film at a local film festival. Vince, his high school friend who is now a volunteer fireman and small-time drug dealer, also visits the town to support Jon on his big day, or so it seems. After a raucous hello and much backslapping, it appears that there is an undercurrent of tension in the air.
Tape

Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.
Slacker

A unique documentary that interlaces archival interviews with author Philip K. Dick with chats featuring cast and crew. Discussed are the origins of the story, parallels the cast and crew sees to the goings-on in today's world, and adapting the story for film, modern audiences, and its unique look.
One Summer in Austin: The Story of Filming 'A Scanner Darkly'

A behind-the scenes look at the grueling one-year process of transferring the filmed images into the unique animation style featured in the final version of the movie 'A Scanner Darkly'.
The Weight of the Line: Animation Tales

After being forgotten for 30 years, the filmmaker revisits Scorsese's lost documentary 'American Boy' and it's raconteur subject, Steven Prince.
American Prince

Stephen Hawking has warned that the creation of powerful artificial intelligence will be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”. Inspired by Brian Christian’s study The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive, the filmmakers set out on an international investigation highlighting the effects of AI - scenes from our daily lives destructive and constructive.
More Human Than Human

On January 1st, 1999, Caveh Zahedi started a one-year video diary. The idea was to shoot one minute each day. This is the result.
In the Bathtub of the World

Documentary that follows the lives of two pirates and their community on the Somali coastline; what are the incentives of the pirates, why did they become pirates, how did they grow up in a country with political chaos, war and extreme poverty? The narrative structure is built around two interweaving story-lines; one depicting the "present", the daily lives of the pirates and their community, and the second in the "past", revealing through epic animation, the unfolding of a recent hijacking.
Last Hijack

In this short film, filmmakers Bob Sabiston and Tommy Pallotta accompany Ryan, a six-foot-tall, 13-year-old autistic boy, to a local convenience store to purchase a "snack and drink".
Snack And Drink

Ethan Sisser, a young man with terminal brain cancer, sits alone in his hospital room. When he starts livestreaming his death journey on social media, thousands of people around the world join to celebrate his courage. Still, Ethan envisions more – to teach the world how to die without fear. To do that, he needs to film his death.