FESTIVAL PREMIERE
Ish Meets a Mermaid
Director: Jonathan Thunder
An artist in a slump meets a mysterious woman from a realm beneath Lake Superior and finds success in the last place he ever expected — death.
CAST & CREDITS
Director
Jonathan Thunder
Writer
Jonathan Thunder, Tashia Hart
Producer
Vera Bianchini
Key Cast
Jonathan Thunder, Tashia Hart, Stacey Thunder, Charles Thunder, Alex Kmett
DIRECTORS STATEMENT
“Visual storytelling plays a big role in my practice. I draw inspiration from influential experiences. These current events become the setting or arrangement. The recipe is often experimental and like a dream sequence. I grew up reading Mad Magazine, Robert Crumb, collecting Garbage Pail Kids, riding skateboards with elaborate, odd designs on the deck, listening to Public Enemy, Rage Against Machine, Tom Waits and watching MTV. I’m also a life student of Ojibwe culture and storytelling. The Twin Cities is where I was raised, and I was born on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. These two worlds are integrated to me, yet far apart. Both worlds inform my perspective. I’m also attracted to urban minutiae, bad graffiti, tattoos, tribal symbolism and children’s tales. I feel these elements help place my work in our time and connect it to where we are today.” – Jonathan Thunder 2025.
DIRECTORS BIO
Jonathan Thunder (b. 1977)
Thunder infuses his personal lens with real-time world experiences using a wide range of mediums. He is known for his surreal paintings, digitally animated films and installations in which he addresses subject matter of personal experience and social commentary. Jon is an enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, and makes his home and studio in Duluth, MN.
He has attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM and studied Visual Effects and Motion Graphics in Minneapolis, MN at the Art Institute International. His work has been featured in many states, regional, and national exhibitions, as well as in local and international publications. Thunder is the recipient of a 2020-21 Pollock – Krasner Foundation Award for his risk taking in painting. Since his first solo exhibit in 2004, he has won several awards for his short films in national and international competitions. His work is in the permanent collections of Museums and Universities.
