Meet Faith Hubley, Joanna Priestley, Ruth Peyser, and Lynn Smith.In each half-hour program, one of these independent animators talks candidly about how she pursues her chosen career. The series reveals how over the years, by painstaking and solitary work, each has developed a highly individual and engagingly personal style.
Thirty years separate these women in age. Geographically they span the continent. Yet they have one outstanding quality in common. They are all willing to spend years, even decades, working largely alone on the meticulous, repetitive process of animation. This most labor-intensive of arts may, however, also be among the most rewarding.
ANIMATED WOMEN shows not only complete works of animation art, but the dedication with which they are pieced together. It captures contrasts in the methods the women use to achieve their shared goals, as well as the powerful commitment needed to sustain such solo flights of imagined fancy.
Faith Hubley, the most prolific of the four, has also been the most collaborative. The grande dame among women animators in this country, winner of "more prizes than I can count," including three Oscars, speaks eloquently in Program One on INSPIRATION, which in her case extends to myth, primitive art, aboriginal painting and playful theories on the nature of time.
With her late husband, John, Faith Hubley pioneered the field of serious animation in this country. Their films such as Moonbird, The Hole and Windy Day broke away from clichéd comic-book traditions to explore new and provocative ideas. Since his death, with assistance from her talented daughters (also animators) and her avid students at Yale, she continues to conceive and direct award-winning animation artworks whose formal, visual elegance is matched by their spiritual resonance.
Program Two profiles Joanna Priestley's POINT OF VIEW. While Priestley refers reverentially to Hubley as "an elder," she herself has developed an impressive, worldwide reputation. The maker of intensely personal and often mocking looks at adulthood's ironic twists and turns, Priestley has no fear of self-revelation.
Her first foray into animation, a rubber-stamp film, took her five years to complete. Rather than scare her off, this only whetted her appetite to gain new skills and try again. She feels drawn to animation because you can go anywhere and do anything with it. "That sense of freedom is exhilarating," she says. "The sky's the limit."
Ruth Peyser paints every image to reflect the mood of her latest film. "It's very labor-intensive," she agrees. "Each frame takes an awfully long time to do." This Australian expatriate to Manhattan brings an urban grit and an activist edge to her New York stories.
The three works of Peyser's featured in Program Three (titled MOOD), which include chilling, dreamlike visions of alienation, stem directly from her belief in the medium's ability to challenge and critique society. "It's not just for exploring the aesthetics of art," says Peyser. She considers herself "still experimenting."
Lynn Smith (Program Four, METHOD) had the idea for Pearl's Diner one day during lunch twenty years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The film, an experiment in collage, took her nine years to make. She finished it in Montreal, Quebec, where she's lived since the mid-'70s.
"If I know it's a good idea, then I just never let go," she explains. "I'm like a little terrier. You hold on with your teeth, especially when you work alone, when you're independent. Either you're going to do that, or you're not going to make the film. It's a very tough procedure." That shared sentiment is one common thread in the series.
The other, respect, remains a difficult commodity to come by. Faith Hubley says the way most Americans see her art form drives her up the wall. "First, it's considered a medium for children. Second, it's considered a medium for morons. It's not taken seriously, and that's dreadful -- and this lack of respect is peculiar to this country." ANIMATED WOMEN may start to change that.
Produced for ITVS by series producer Patty Wineapple and series director Sybil DelGaudio of Side-Kicks Productions, the series has already received recognition. ANIMATED WOMEN was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle in November and picked up other prizes and honors at film festivals around the country.
The subject of animation has rarely been so completely chronicled by turning a camera on the animation artists themselves. Producer Wineapple says of ANIMATED WOMEN's four subjects, "The interesting thing about the four of them is that each one is different from the other. None of them uses the same process."
"We wanted to give a broader overview that looked at subject matter and thematic concerns," adds director DelGaudio. "Since they're all expressions of the artist's own individual perspective, we thought it was important not only to explore the art and process of animation over the course of the series, but also to explore what within each of these artists compels them to use their films as personal expressions."
ITVS is proud to introduce four uncommon women and to showcase many of their full-length works of original animation in a series that will make you think, feel and laugh. "Animation is such a fleeting pleasure that it belies the extraordinary amount of skill and artistry required," said ITVS director of production and programming David Liu. "This series `rescues' these 6-12 minute wonders from the realm of the short to reveal the talent, technique and dedication of four of the world's best."
As a bonus, each program of the series begins with a short experimental animation work by yet another independent woman artist. Maureen Selwood, who animated the opening credits sequence at the request of Side-Kicks Productions, is on the full-time faculty at Cal Arts in Southern California. The observant viewer may notice that her series intro pays tribute to the varied styles of the four ANIMATED WOMEN.
ANIMATED WOMEN is a three-part public television series produced by Side-Kicks Productions (Patty Wineapple, producer; Sybil DelGaudio, director) for the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.