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Signe Baumane was born in 1964 in Auce, Latvia, and grew up mostly in Tukums, Latvia, in the Soviet Union's Far East. In 1991 she made her debut as scriptwriter, director, and artist with a two-minute animated film, The Witch and the Cow. In September of 1995 she moved to New York City where, in January 1996, she started work as production manager, color stylist, and cel painter for Bill Plympton's animated feature I Married a Strange Person. She subsequently worked on several other Bill Plympton short films: Sex and Violence (1997), The Exciting Life of a Tree (1998), More Sex and Violence (1998), an MTV pilot Helter Shelter (1998), Surprise Cinema (1999), and Eat (2001) and took over production of Bill's newest feature animation Mutant Aliens in the summer of 2000. In early 2002 she completed the animated short Five Fucking Fables. Shortly afterward, she returned to Latvia, where she was given grants by the Film Center Foundation and Culture Capital to make a ten-minute film. The film, Woman, premiered on September 21st in the Latvian Film Festival Arsenals. The same year, her documentary portrait Signe and.... was shot by the recognized Latvian documentary filmmaker Dzintra Geka. Dentist, her latest film, was created during 2003 and 2004, while she was also working on Bill Plymptn's feature Hair High as a cel painter and camera assistant. Five Infomercials for Dentists, a parody based on the same characters of dentist and patient, accompanied Dentist for festival submissions in early 2005. In 1999 She received Permanent Resident Card as an Extraordinary Ability Alien. |