‘Where is My home?’ by Cecelia de Jesus was the official winner of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Student voices film competition in 2013. The film tells the story of Vera Gissing and her escape from Czechoslovakia during the start of the Holocaust. The USC Shoah Foundation is home to one of the largest collections of digital archive footage of Holocaust survivors and witnesses, currently housing over 55,000 video testimonies.
De Jesus used archive footage, along with sand animation, to bring Vera Gissing’s story to life. When watching the film, you can’t help but be entranced by the macro sequences where we see individual grains of sand and translucency. The abstract imagery De Jesus creates with the sand spotlights Gissing’s testimony, the moving images accompanying her voice rather than pulling attention away from it. The film tells a harrowing real-life story, emphasising Vera Gissing’s voice.
This 2013 animated documentary by Ellen Bruno is a personal animated documentary which focuses on the perspectives of children aged 6-12 who are experiencing the divorce of their parents. Made in collaboration with children, ‘Split’ puts them at the forefront of the issue. Approximately one million children experience divorce in the family each year, but often the children’s experiences and viewpoints fly under the radar. Bruno’s film is for children and by children.
The aim of the film is to not only give voice to children of divorce, but also to inform parents and encourage them to make better choices with their children in mind, as they navigate divorce.
Ellen Bruno is an award-winning filmmaker from San Francisco who focuses on issues surrounding human rights, often working with refugee-related issues. ‘Split’, like many of her other films, gives a voice to those who more often than not go unheard.
Stacy Bias is a Glasgow-based animator, activist and artist. A part of her animation studio, Your Story Studio, ‘Yoga For Larger Bodies’ is a 2016 animated documentary which tells the story of one woman’s experience as a plus-sized yoga instructor.
The story is told through a continuous line-drawn animation which visualises the experiences and emotions shared through the narration. The piece aims to put emphasis on all bodies and all kinds of health being of equal value. The continuous line of the animation represents meditation, union and connection, all of which are key elements of yoga practice. ‘Yoga For All Bodies’ is a beautiful and heartfelt short animated documentary which is definitely worth a watch.
Anna Ginsburg’s ”Living with Depression’ visually interprets the experiences of two people giving their personal accounts of experiencing depression. The 2D hand-drawn animation style is expressive, each frame is detailed and full of life, yet beautifully encompasses the struggle of living with depression.
Ginsberg has a certain quality with all of her films which is very open and honest. ‘Living with Depression’ is no different as she aims to portray the aspects of depression which can’t be easily explained to those who do not experience it. The use of animation gives a visual to the interview narration and brings it to life in an engaging way.
The film was also the winner of the DepicT! award in 2012.
Roger Ross Williams‘ feature film ‘Life, Animated’ is based on the book ‘Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism‘ by Ron Suskind, which tells the story of his son, Owen, and his experience with autism. At the age of three, Owen became non-verbal but Suskind and his wife soon came to understand that Owen would use Disney animated movies as a way to connect and communicate with the world.
The film is comprised of the Suskind family’s home video clips, present-day interviews, and animation. Disney animation is a huge part of Owen Suskind’s life, and the animation in ‘Life, Animated’ has echoes of movies we know such as ‘The Jungle Book’ or ‘The Little Mermaid’. The fluid movements and expressive characters also have an organic, hand-drawn element to them which brings the animation closer to reality. The colourless palette also lends further emphasis to the real-life interviews and recordings which are included in the film, putting Owen and the story he has to tell at front and centre. Allowing Owen to share his own story was William’s main concern, “All too often in films about people with disabilities, the narrative gets taken away from them.”
The trailer gives us a glimpse into this personal and heartfelt film, and the insight it give us into the lives of those like Owen who struggle to understand and connect with the world around them in a conventional way.
Carrie Hawks‘ (they/them) is a gender non-conforming artist, designer, animator and filmmaker based in New York, US. They work with a wide span of media and methods of making such as performance, doll-making, drawing, animation, motion graphic design and multimedia design.
Hawks’ film titled ‘Black Enuf*’ explores expanding Black identity by interweaving personal stories from their great grandmother’s autobiography, interviews with friends and family, and hand-drawn visualisations of their own memories. The 22 minute film offers a mix of media and is experimental in style; it uses hand-drawn elements alongside scanned textures and digital artwork.
Hawks summaries the film as follows : ‘A queer oddball seeks approval from Black peers despite a serious lack of Hip-Hop credentials’ (via).
‘I am interested in the concept of skin and race, and what they imply; the ideas and theories sown into our flesh that change with the arc of time’ – Ng’endo Mukii (via)
Ng’endo Mukii holds a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art (2012) in London, and a Bachelor of Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (2006), USA. She is an award-winning filmmaker and is currently Professor of Practice at Tufts University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She is a writer on Netflix’s Mama K’s Team 4 series, and is one of 10 directors selected for the upcoming Disney+ and Triggerfish animated anthology, Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire.
Mukii describes ‘Yellow Fever’ as an exploration of the international fashion and beauty industry and it’s racist hierarchy. Her focus is the impact this has on the psyche of African women:
‘I believe skin and the body are often distorted into a topographical division between reality and illusion. The idea of beauty has become globalised, creating homogenous aspirations and distorting people’s self-image across the planet. In my film, I focus on African women’s self-image, through memories and interviews, using mixed media to describe this almost schizophrenic [sic] self-visualisation that I and many others have grown up with.’ (via)
‘Our earliest childhood memories, often episodic, are one of our most intimate experiences’ – Mary Martins (via)
Mary Martins is a London-based animator and filmmaker. She is experimental in her practice, attempting to push boundaries of animated documentary and explore innovative new ways to portray reality. Martins was the 2017 winner of the Procreate Project Mother Art Prize and her films have been screened at multiple festivals around the world.
Commissioned by BFI and BBC4, ‘Childhood Memories’ by Mary Martins is a multi-layered film which utilises stop-motion and 2D digital animation, as well as 16mm colour film footage from 1970s Lagos, Nigeria. This autobiographical short explores childhood memories and cultural backgrounds.
Still from ‘Childhood Memories’
Martin’s reflected upon the starting point for the film, linking it to her earliest child hood memory: “… when I accompanied my mother to Lagos, Nigeria in 1987. I was 4 years old. I was too young to remain in London with my Father and my two older sisters.” (via)
Watch ‘Childhood Memories’ here. (Available only in the UK)
Ana Mouyis is an animator, illustrator, filmmaker and educator based in Louisiana, US. In 2020, animateddocumentary.com’s Alys Scott Hawkins interviewed Ana about her film ‘Cambia Tutto’ which takes the viewer through the small Italian village of Canieza and emphasises how the town has changed over time. ‘Cambia Tutto’ was screened at multiple film festivals in Europe, the US and Brazil, and won Fisheye Film Festival’s 2021 Audience Award for best short documentary, and The Americas Film Festivals 2020 award for best experimental short.
Read Alys’s interview with Ana Mouyis:
How did the film come about?
The film was created as part of a residency opportunity in Canieza, Italy – musician Fox Schwach and I applied as a collaborative. The residency asked for work that connected to the location; a small village in Northern Italy. In our proposal we pitched the idea of creating a short film that would act as a portrait of the town, I would direct the animation and Fox would create a score. When we arrived we were so struck by the scenery of it all and wanted to make a contemplative piece that would highlight the beauty in the details of this small town.
Can you tell us about the motivation for / meaning of the film?
A lot of it had to do with the circumstances – we wanted to make a film about this small village but we had never been there so part of the process was getting there and immersing ourselves in the environment. For this reason we decided to work with replacement animation and hyperlapse as that would require us to explore and spend hours walking around photographing the surrounding area. One thing that became clear to us conceptually as we worked on this piece was that we were interested in building a portrait of this town through small/often-overlooked details. Photography (rather than video footage) allowed us to zero in on all these tiny details. For example, taking hundreds of pictures of different flowers from all over the village, we can put them together into a longer mesmerizing sequence, which would be different than just filming some flowers swaying in the breeze. In a general sense, both Fox and I, in our work, are interested in the sort of life and vibrancy that come from imperfections of hand-made/manual processes. Embracing some of the shaky/jittery processes of this kind of animation appealed to us for this project, so the viewer could get a feel for the human element that went into making it.
One aspect that really helped to inform the shape of the final film was the interview with Wilma Andrighetto, the mother of Paola De Martin, who is one of the residency organizers (and owners of the house we stayed in). Wilma has lived in that town her whole life. Her view on how the town has evolved over the years became a central conceptual element to how we put the film together. It was important to us to have some local perspective to keep it from just being a kind of travelogue
Where will it be screened or distributed?
We initially released it on Vimeo because of the pandemic, especially with how badly it was affecting Italy. With everyone in lockdown we felt it was a good time to put it online and share it freely, rather than only showing it at film festivals or galleries as we had originally planned. It’s been gratifying to share it with our friends and family and broader networks and hear that it’s helped people’s cabin fever in some small way. More recently it has screened at a number of film festivals and online showcases in Europe and the US.
What are you working on next?
This summer I will be returning to Cyprus, where I grew up and will be an artist in residence at Animafest Cyprus animation film festival. During the residency I will work on the production of an experimental documentary animation about the culture of Cyprus. By highlighting the commonalities between the customs and traditions of its divided peoples I hope to foster a greater understanding and empathy between the segregated communities in the North and South of the island. Fox and I will collaborate again on this project with him assisting me with audio recordings and sound design as well as composing an original score.
This animated documentary by students from the Lodz Film School in Poland is a protest film which protests the Polish government’s implementation of a stricter abortion law in October 2020. This film was brought to our attention by Thomas Martinelli, who interviewed two of the students and published an article over at Global Il Manifesto. We wanted to highlight here at animateddocumentary.com in light of the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States only last month.
#polish_women_resistance is a powerful piece which is made up of a multitude of voices. Many male and female students from Lodz Film School contributed to the 8-minute short film, and you can definitely see the distinct styles through the piece. Despite the variety of animated segments, the film is very cohesive. The black and red colours throughout are bold and striking, and the music by Pim Lekler gives a sense of urgency.
Martinelli’s article goes into further detail about the motivations and impact of the film, and explores how animation can be impactful when used to as a tool in social issues.
ANIMATEDDOCUMENTARY.COM 