Meet the excit­ing young direc­tors behind animation’s female revolution

A young woman is naked, her legs spread wide open on a sofa. Yet, whether it’s the noise from traf­fic out­side or the unwant­ed atten­tion of a neigh­bour, she just can’t seem to get com­fort­able enough to con­tin­ue plea­sur­ing her­self. After a num­ber of false starts and with her frus­tra­tion mount­ing, the cam­era zooms in on her ani­mat­ed cli­toris. As it sprouts a face and fangs, and the labia turn into wings, the whole thing morphs into a vagi­na-come-vam­pire bat, flut­ters into the air and sweeps down to devour the Peep­ing Tom try­ing to catch a glimpse from outside.

This scene from Cip­ka (Pussy) by Pol­ish ani­ma­tor Rena­ta Gąsiorows­ka is just one of a host of out­ra­geous, dis­con­cert­ing and down­right hilar­i­ous moments that wowed audi­ences at Greece’s Ani­ma Syros fes­ti­val, cre­at­ed by a stel­lar cast of female ani­ma­tors. The wealth of tal­ent on show and their con­fi­dence to take on per­son­al and provoca­tive sub­ject mat­ter – from mas­tur­ba­tion to alco­holism and BDSM – is a proud indi­ca­tion that this bright new gen­er­a­tion of female ani­ma­tors have balls.

But while the major­i­ty of stu­dents on most ani­ma­tion cours­es today are female and female ani­ma­tors are increas­ing­ly well-rep­re­sent­ed at short film fes­ti­vals, only two woman have won Acad­e­my Awards for Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film, Bren­da Chap­man for Brave in 2012 and Jen­nifer Lee for Frozen in 2013. So, what is stop­ping young tal­ent pro­gress­ing through the indus­try? LWLies sat down with an inter­na­tion­al group of female ani­ma­tors show­ing at Ani­ma Syros to talk about how much progress has been made, the blocks that remain and what can be done to over­come them.

“Every year there’s just so much more con­tent, the bar­ri­ers to entry fall and it’s eas­i­er to get the soft­ware and start mak­ing ani­ma­tion, so that has helped encour­age a big increase in female ani­ma­tors,” explains Aisha Madu from the Nether­lands, direc­tor of Helpi­man, a tragi­com­ic tale about a man whose will­ing­ness to help oth­ers is not rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed when he him­self needs a life­line. ​“But the boys win all the awards and I’ve lost count how many times peo­ple thought Helpi­man was made by a male director.”

Women were locked out of all but the most menial tasks at major ani­ma­tion stu­dios like Dis­ney until well into the 1950s. The ​‘boys club’ dies hard, with women today still too often pushed towards design rather than sto­ry. But a lot has changed in the ani­ma­tion world, and many of the most cre­ative voic­es work inde­pen­dent­ly, well out­side the big ani­ma­tion stu­dios, on shorts made by small teams, like Tabook.

“We want to break taboos and open up the con­ver­sa­tion around young women and sex­u­al­i­ty,” explains Tünde Vol­len­broek from The Nether­lands, who pro­duced the film, whose lead almost bursts with embar­rass­ment when she tries to bor­row a book on bondage from the library. ​“We hope the film gives women the courage not to care and for­get the shame they felt dur­ing their teens.” Tabook sought out its tar­get audi­ence and was seen by half a mil­lion Dutch cin­ema­go­ers, before each screen­ing of the lat­est Brid­get Jones’ Diary, through a Pathé pro­gramme that sup­ports short film by attach­ing it to block­buster releas­es nationwide.

More peo­ple are watch­ing ani­mat­ed shorts than ever before, main­ly online, but cre­ators still strug­gle immense­ly to get projects fund­ed. ​“The form isn’t doing well any­where, in the sense that it’s not sup­port­ed, screened on tele­vi­sion or respect­ed in the way it once was,” argues Špela Čadež from Slove­nia, who direct­ed Noč­na Pti­ca (Nighthawk), a psy­che­del­ic romp about a drunk-dri­ving bad­ger. ​“Every­one advis­es you to do a fea­ture, but the imbal­ance there is obvi­ous: it’s only male direc­tors doing fea­tures. The very bad­ly-financed stuff, like ani­mat­ed shorts, are left over for the crazy women like us. That leads to a high attri­tion rate as female ani­ma­tors can’t pay the bills and slow­ly but sure­ly, they fall out of the industry.”

The group argue that fund­ing pri­or­i­ties could change to sup­port female ani­ma­tors make the jump to fea­tures. They would like ani­ma­tion schools to push more women towards direct­ing, see women in lead­er­ship posi­tions to inspire the next gen­er­a­tion and devel­op men­tor­ing and peer sup­port net­works, which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for inde­pen­dent direc­tors. But as such impor­tant steps in a director’s career, fes­ti­vals need to change too. Women may be well-rep­re­sent­ed in pro­gram­ming, but when it comes to talks and pan­el events, men still dom­i­nate – and Aisha has become so used to be being the only per­son of colour at Euro­pean festivals.

“There’s a long-held prej­u­dice that women can’t make cer­tain films, espe­cial­ly com­e­dy,” explains Britt Raes from Bel­gium, who direct­ed Cather­ine, a trag­ic tale of a crazy cat lady. ​“I think it’s real­ly cool when I get a lot of guys telling me I made them laugh with this very pink, girl­ish char­ac­ter. So, I feel like we have come a long way and on some lev­els things have improved a lot. But there’s a dan­ger that we’ll say, ​‘Oh, it’s bet­ter now’ and stop try­ing. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but there’s still a huge amount to be done.”

For more info on this year’s fes­ti­val vis­it ani​masy​ros​.gr