Special Joanna Quinn
Andalussian Film Institute, November 9th: 11:30am-14:00am
Master Class and Screenings
Joanna QuinnFor someone of Joanna’s reputation and distinction in the world of animation the first thing that strikes you when you meet her is her accessibility, her cheerfulness and her absolute lack of pretension. These same qualities can be found lurking within the characters of her films, characters often living in the shadows perhaps, of their more assertive and ambitious friends and acquaintances but nevertheless always full of joie de vivre and warmth. Joanna has always identified with the unsung heroines in society - the unglamorous, the ordinary, the underrepresented. Her characters, in particular the women, emerge reluctantly and unpredictably from conventional worlds where ordinariness, camaraderie and optimism are common virtues but from which periodically erupts surprising and dazzling interludes which startle and shock. For audiences this is only one of the many delights to be found in Joanna’s films.
Born in Birmingham, England in 1962 Joanna spent most of her childhood in London and it is no surprise to learn that her pathway to animation began very early on through an absolute love of drawing. Being an only child with a single parent she entertained herself constantly by inventing and entering her own worlds through the simple but effective medium of the pencil. She won her first drawing prize at the age of 8 entering a competition she saw on a packet of cereal. With no knowledge or experience of animation, Joanna’s initial ambition was to become a comic strip artiste inspired by the political cartoons of Gillray, Grosz and Heartfield, the comic strips of Hergé and the socio/political cartoon strips of Steve Bell and Posy Simmonds. She was clearly more interested in social realism and political comment than in the fantasy worlds conjured up in the majority of mainstream American comic strips.
The one thing these comic strips had in common though was that the characters were all incredibly well observed, beautifully drawn and with a bitingly satirical edge, qualities found also in the work of the artists Joanna most admired –artists such as Goya, Velazquez, Daumier, Lautrec and Degas. Acute observation was, and still is, the key to Joanna’s visual vocabulary. Her first drawn comic strips were based on incidents that she herself experienced, however, she remained dissatisfied and frustrated by what she felt was the lack of energy in her strips. She craved for a more dynamic and expressive medium to bring life to her imagery. It was at Middlesex University that she was first introduced to animation. It was an instant revelation: at last she had found a medium that would breathe vitality and energy into her drawings, although to many she had already demonstrated a uniquely dynamic and fluid drawing style which anticipated the qualities that later were to make her animation so vibrant and distinctive.
From that moment Animation became Joanna’s obsession. In college she produced a range of short animated films which included Superdog and Dancer and which culminated in her graduation film Girls Night Out a brilliantly simple and humorous riposte to machismo and a celebration of uninhibited female lust. This film, made on a shoestring budget, introduced the unlikely heroine Beryl and became an immediate international success, launching both Joanna and Beryl onto a world stage. Over the years the uniquely memorable character of Beryl was to become the focus for two more personal films Body Beautiful and Dreams and Desires - Family Ties. The politics of gender and oppression together with Joanna’s obsessive fascination and delight with exploring the eccentricities of the human body, in particular the female form, became central themes of her work.
This work though, has not been limited solely to making personally authored films. With her company Beryl Productions located in Cardiff, Wales, she has produced a very wide and distinctive folio of commissioned films and commercials for TV, which include the Oscar nominated Wife of Bath a raucous and acerbic adaptation of one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Elles, a wonderfully lively celebration of the work of Toulouse Lautrec; and Britannia, a biting and savage indictment of the development and demise of British Imperialism. Many regard Britannia as Joanna’s masterpiece, a film which demonstrates all the unique characteristics of her work - brilliant characterization, superb draughtsmanship and wonderful animation technique.
Her latest film Dreams and Desires - Family Ties has been universally acclaimed, winning over forty major animation awards including the European Cartoon d’Or 2006.
Les Mills
Productor y guionista
Proyections:
