Originally from Barcelona, Spain, and raised in Germany, Catya Plate is a Brooklyn-based award-winning artist, director, writer, animator and producer who came to New York in 1987 through a Fulbright Scholarship for post-graduate studies at the School of Visual Arts.
Known for “Cultivating Innovative Feminist Socio-Environmental Stop-Motion Animation” (Lois Weber Pioneer Award 2021 at the Queens World Film Festival), Catya has been exhibiting internationally since the mid-1980's and her work is included in private and public collections worldwide like The Brooklyn Museum and NY Public Library/Print Collection.
Reviews of her projects have appeared in The New York Times, UK Film Review, The Independent, etc. and Catya has been featured in Animation World Network, Animation Magazine and Terry Ibele’s Animation Industry Podcast, among others.
In 2009 she created Clothespin Freak Productions to bring her “Clothespin Freaks” characters to life through stop-motion animation short films.
Clothespin Freak Productions has produced four award-winning shorts: The Reading (2010) and the ecological shorts trilogy Hanging By A Thread (2013), Meeting MacGuffin (2017) and Las Nogas (2023).
Catya’s handcrafted animated films combine imagination with humor and hope against the backdrop of a world in peril and are cautionary tales that celebrate animal ingenuity and the importance of species survivalism. Indie Shorts Magazine proclaimed Meeting MacGuffin Is the Best Stop-Motion, Ecological Thriller Out There!
In 2019, her Las Nogas screenplay won the Grand Prize for Best Animation Short Script at Flickers’ RIIFF Screenplay Competition.
In April 2023, she was awarded a prestigious NYC Women’s Fund Grant by the NYC Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment & New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) for her stop-motion film Las Nogas which serves as proof of concept for her stop-motion feature and first act in ALMA.
In 2023, Las Nogas premiered at the Oscar-Qualifying Flickers’ RIIFF and won the GREEN PLANET AWARD for Best Environmental Film. Additional awards - as of 2024 - include Best Short at Green Film Festival of San Francisco, Best Animation at Queens World Film Festival (NY Premiere), Best Animated Film at Fano International Film Festival (Italy Premiere), Best Environmental Short at the Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology (North Pacific Premiere) and a first Grant by The Puffin Foundation for her upcoming feature ALMA .
In addition to screening her films and exhibiting her art projects she’s been an active speaker on film festival panels, an invited filmmaker to animation industry conferences, a juror for film festivals and an educator of stop motion animation workshops at universities.