Cartoon College
Written, directed, and filmed by Tara Wray & Josh Melrod
Produced by Alan Oxman, Josh Melrod, and Tara Wray
Music by Jason Zumpano
color, 75 minutes, 2012


In the summer of 2007 filmmakers Josh Melrod and Tara Wray left New York City for the wilds of Vermont to begin shooting Cartoon College. They spent the next three years following the lives of a few unique students at the Center for Cartoon Studies, the nation's premiere institution of higher learning for aspiring literary cartoonists and graphic novelists. Along the way they interviewed some of the most famous names in independent comics, including Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, Kim Deitch, Scott McCloud, Francoise Mouly, R. Sikoryak, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware, among others, in addition to traveling across the country to meet comic book store owners, museum curators, convention goers, critics, librarians, college professors, and fans to find out what it takes to make it in the world of indie comics. Buy.

Selected Screenings

  • Newport Beach Film Festival
  • Palm Beach International Film Festival
  • Visions Du Reel, Media Library
  • Sheffield Doc/Fest Videoteque
  • Woods Hole Film Festival
  • Prescott Film Festival
  • Orange County Museum of Art
  • CineSol Film Festival
  • SPX 2012, Bethesda, MD
  • Salt Lake City Film Festival
  • Lexington, Kentucky CCG
  • Vancouver International Film Festival
  • Tacoma Film Festival
  • Carmel Art & Film Festival
  • Sound Unseen Film Festival, Minneapolis
  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Pickford Film Center, Bellingham, WA
  • Main Street Museum, White River Junction, VT
  • Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, OR
  • Coast City ComicCon, Portland, ME
  • Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal
  • San Francisco Documentary Festival
  • Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA
  • Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
  • Spokane International Film Festival
  • Glasgow Film Festival
  • BilBOlBul International Comics Festival, Bologna, Italy
  • Dinner And A Movie Film Series, Woods Hole, MA
  • Kutztown University School of Art, Kutztown, PA
  • Columbia University, New York, NY
  • Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
  • White River Indie Film Festival, White River Junction, VT
  • Resene Art & Design Film Festival, Auckland
  • Midtown Art Cinema, Atlanta, GA
  • Resene Art & Design Film Festival, Wellington, New Zealand
  • Resene Art & Design Film Festival, Dunedin, New Zealand
  • Society of Illustrators, New York City
  • Denver Film Society, Denver, CO
  • SPACE Gallery, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME
  • Bangkok Design Festival, Bangkok, Thailand
Using Format