Presenting Figures in Focus – Up Yours! at LIAF 2021
This edition of London International Animation Festival, I’ll be presenting on the opening night a celebration of radical animators making politically charged work. At a time in the UK when our right to protest is being challenged, this programme reflects on the power of animation to spread a message. The title is a nod to the seminal work Oh Bondage Up Yours! by British, feminist, punk pioneer Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and and its message to break free from the bondage of a patriarchal and consumerist society.
The programme features contemporary animations about issues that continue to be questioned, such as gender equality, body image, gay rights, maternity, sexual harassment, and women’s sexual agency. Works by daring animators, including Martha Colburn, Chloé Mazlo, Lorelei Pepin and OV, demonstrate how animators are presenting an alternate viewpoint to the status quo through their experimental and artistic work. There’s an introduction to the programme here.
After the screening I will be leading a panel discussion with filmmakers Comfort Arthur, Stacy Bias, Birgitta Hosea and Lily Ash Sakula.
Figures in Focus, (previously called Female Figures) was devised in 2017 by me, in recognition of the under-representation of female and non-binary animators and their stories within the independent animation sector, the programme spotlights some of the incredible work crafted by contemporary animators, both in the UK and internationally.
With thanks to Comfort Arthur, Stacy Bias, Birgitta Hosea and Lily Ash Sakula, Waltraud Grausgruber, Jayne Pilling, Nag Vladermersky, Gary Thomas, Kate Anderson, Elizabeth Hobbs, Samantha Moore, Ellie Land, and all the featured filmmakers, their producers, and distributors.
Content warning: violence, blood, abuse, death, mental illness, drug abuse, masturbation, nudity, implied child abuse, hateful language, rape threat, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, racist representation.
Contains flashing imagery.
Book tickets for the Barbican screening here, the online programme here.
Films (run time c. 80 mins)
Join the Freedom Force, Martha Colburn, US, 2009, 4 min
Betti, Zsuzsanna Ács, Hungary, 2018, 5 min
Erasure, Birgitta Hosea, UK, 2017, 3 min
Anna, Cat and Mouse, Varya Yakovleva, Russia, 2020, 5 min
Scum Mutation, OV, France, 2020, 10 min
Service, Yang Yu Jung, Lee Mi Sun and Jeong Sun Ha, South Korea, 2015, 4 min
Hot Flash, Thea Hollatz, Canada, 2019, 10 min
Black Barbie, Comfort Arthur, UK/Ghana, 2016, 4 min
Happy and Gay, Lorelei Pepi, US, 2014, 10 min
Tiger and Ox, Seunghee Kim, South Korea, 2019, 8 min
Eyes, Lily Ash Sakula, UK, 2019, 5 min
Asmahan the Diva, Chloé Mazlo, France, 2019, 6 min
Flying While Fat, Stacy Bias, UK, 2016, 6 min
Synopses
Join the Freedom Force, Martha Colburn, 2009, 4 min
Protesters from around the world join forces to protest all causes in a huge protest. Anti-chicken murder, climate catastrophe, oil, voter oppression protesters mix with nudists, Greenpeace demonstrators and punks. Originally made as a music video for the band Knalpot (funded by TAX Videoclip Fonds). In the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Betti, Zsuzsanna Ács, Hungary, 2018, 6 min
Betti Forgó, was a freedom loving punk in the 80s. She found her independence in driving a cab and has been doing it ever since. Betti shares her reflections on the negative stereotypes people attribute to taxi drivers, the 90s blockade, and the recent demonstrations against Uber and her role in these events. Because Betti always had a role in them and always will.
Erasure, Birgitta Hosea, UK, 2017, 3 min
Physical labour creates the world around us – constructing buildings, manufacturing goods,
cooking, cleaning… Yet, all too often this work remains unrecognised and invisible. Based on the filmmaker’s own experience of working as a cleaner, Erasure, uses repetitive actions and the textures of ink, bleach, and other cleaning products to re-animate the labour of domestic work performed over and over by many generations of women, but then forgotten and taken for granted.
Anna, Cat-and-Mouse, Varya Yakovleva, Russia, 2020, 5 min
About abuse, cats, and matchboxes.
Scum Mutation, OV, France, 2020, 10 min
Here you are SCUM, caged creature. Your gaze wavers inside the rage of our time. Your scream testifies to an individual and societal wound, a traumatic memory of our condition to overthrow. Your gesture, survival drive, questions our visceral link to violence. SCUM, in your silicon hands young germs are growing and mutating.
Service, Yang Yu Jung, Lee Mi Sun, Jeong Sun Ha, Korea, 2015, 4 min
A woman working in the service industry who is routinely exposed to abusive language and personal attacks is getting tired of the daily routine. One day she starts having strange dreams…
Hot Flash, Thea Hollatz, Canada, 2019, 10 min (pictured above)
Ace Naismith is having a hot flash, and she is about to go live on local television. Hot Flash is a journey into the funny, uncomfortable, and sometimes maddening world of an ageing
professional woman navigating a culture that puts great emphasis on physical appearance.
Black Barbie, Comfort Arthur, UK/Ghana, 2016, 4 min
Black Barbie is a poetry animation that talks about the filmmaker’s personal experience with being uncomfortable with her dark skin and using skin bleaching products to lighten her skin as a young person.
Happy and Gay, Lorelei Pepi, US, 2014, 10 min
A revisionist history, 1930s style, black and white, cartoon musical that queers the power of representation, whilst reminding us of the early cartoon era’s acts of censorship, prejudice, and stereotype.
Tiger and Ox, Seunghee Kim, South Korea, 2019, 8 min
What does divorce mean to women in Korean patriarchal society? Is a fatherless family failure? In order to find the answer for the questions, a single mother and her daughter start the conversation.
Eyes, Lily Ash Sakula, UK, 2019, 5 min
Eyes is a surreal mixed media animation exploring existence outside the gender binary, embodying the tension between being looked at and being seen. Created in conversation with LGBTQ+ youth. Written by Roisin Dunnett. Music ‘Eyes’ by Big Joanie.
Asmahan the Diva, Chloé Mazlo, France, 2019, 6 min
The life of Asmahan, the diva and Druze princess was short, but what a life! Marriages, espionage, lovers, alcohol, poker, murders, scandals… This oriental Marilyn has marked the golden age of the Egyptian musical comedies. Today, her voice still resonates everywhere in the Middle East and her mysterious death in the waters of the Nile still feeds the wildest rumours.
Flying While Fat, Stacy Bias, UK, 2016, 6 min
Bodies come in all sizes, but sadly physical spaces do not. Flying While Fat explores the financial and social exclusions that determine whose body is considered and whose body is not in the creation of material medians. More to the point, it incorporates the voices and lived experiences of those whose bodies are ‘designed out’ of physical spaces.
Speakers
Comfort Arthur is a British born Ghanaian award-winning animator, illustrator, and visual artist. She trained at the Royal College of Art before moving to Ghana to set up The Comfy Studio. Her short film Black Barbie has been an international hit and has screened in more than 50 film festivals across the world and has won several awards. In 2020 she released her first children’s picture book under the same name. She is the first Ghanaian animator to win the African Academy Movie awards for best animation for her web series I’m Living in Ghana Get Me Out of Here. She also teaches animation and has worked with the Ladima Film Academy to facilitate animation workshops for women in Africa.
Stacy Bias is an activist, artist and animator living in the UK. She creates 2D animations with a focus on storytelling for social change. 20 years of activism informs her practice and current works combine ethnographic research with animation to create humanising narratives that amplify marginalised voices. This work highlights and celebrates the resilience, creativity, and strength of those living at the margins of social inclusion while also confronting the damaging ideologies that require those skills. Bias’s work targets empathy and the places where it’s absent, asking questions about social legitimacy, barriers to access and the impacts of exclusion.
Birgitta Hosea is a time-based media artist working with expanded animation and experimental drawing to create durational images, live performances, experiential installations, and short films that expand the concept of the moving image out of the screen and into the present moment. Recent exhibitions include National Gallery X; Venice & Karachi Biennales; Oaxaca & Chengdu Museums of Contemporary Art; InspiralLondon and Hanmi Gallery, Seoul. Currently Professor of Moving Image at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, she was previously Head of Animation at the Royal College of Art and prior to that at Central Saint Martins, where she completed a practice-based PhD in animation as a form of performance.
Lily Ash Sakula is a trans non-binary artist and animator. They make collaborative films that link different generations and communities; creating space for chaotic fertility and collective brilliance. Lily is interested in capturing instances of joy, flashes of excitement and glimpses of practical utopias; creating magical spaces in which social norms can be broken. They seek through their work to be an active practitioner of radical hope.
Image: Hot Flash, Thea Hollatz