Personal and Poetic: Australian Women’s Animation after 1990

“I love to look at the few small treasures the sea discards…” – Small Treasures (Sarah Watt, 1995)

“Animation offers real potential for exploring women’s issues because of its light touch – its magic. Drawings don’t bleed or cry.” – Anne Jolliffe ¹

Ann Shenfield writes that Australian women’s animation is “characterised by an intimacy of scale” and that its animators “have something to say that can be effectively said in a concise and visually poetic medium whilst also proving that they can narratively pack a powerful punch.”² Much of the writing around women’s animation has claimed that it holds a certain kind of appeal in its ability to express the personal and poetic, narratively as well as materially, and visually through the diversity of form and technique. The films presented in this program showcase this variety of styles, approaches, and materials, exploring a range of subject matter alternatively through humour, tenderness, anger, and affection.

Made with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission, On a Full Moon (1997)  was Lee Whitmore’s first solo work after completing Ned Wethered (1983), although she had continued to animate and collaborate with filmmakers, including with Ross Gibson on Camera Natura (1985), and the animated sequences in Susan Dermody’s feature film, Breathing Under Water (1991). Dermody’s work is considered a key example of Australian autofiction,³ and I would suggest that Whitmore’s filmmaking could also be considered an example of such. On a Full Moon sees Laura (voiced by Whitmore) experience the death of her mother shortly before the birth of her first child. With her daughter now a toddler, she has a chance encounter with childhood friend, Jane (voiced by Noni Hazelhurst), also a new mum, leading her to reflect further on her mother’s loss and the ways her own life has changed. On a Full Moon is an autobiographical work, which Whitmore has described as “a poem to my mother’s memory”.⁴ Whitmore’s pencil-on-paper style is immediately recognisable from her first film Ned Wethered (1983), but On a Full Moon additionally incorporates beautiful use of colour through pastels. The scenes rendered in pastel offer a sense of timelessness, as if pulled directly from the deep pools of memory. Deep, midnight blues and rich, warm tones of red and orange permeate Laura’s reminiscences. These contrast with scenes where the group of young mums meet for lunch with their toddlers in the present day, which are drawn in pencil and almost frenetic with activity (“I thought these images had to be noisy, busy, even chaotic.”)⁵ This colour slowly seeps more and more into the present, as Laura is finally able to say goodbye to her mother.

Ada (2002) sees Whitmore continuing to explore different materials. The film, which is visually reminiscent of the animation of Caroline Leaf, was completed using charcoal and pastel on paper in a straight-ahead method under camera, whereby one image is drawn or painted, then erased or painted over for the next frame. This lends the work an almost haptic quality, as traces of the previous frame remain in the next. Like Ned Wethered, Ada focuses on the small, everyday actions that become ingrained in memory – in this case, her grandmother sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas. The passage of time becomes palpable not only through the carefully animated gestures and repetitive movements of Whitmore’s grandmother, but the subtle changes of light and shadow as days and years pass. Following the more traditional animation of On a Full Moon, Ada was a new technical approach for Whitmore and an evolution in visual style that allowed her to produce work in full colour.

Like Ada, Marieka Walsh’s The Crossing (2016) was also completed in a straight-ahead, under camera fashion but using different materials – salt and sand. The Crossing is Walsh’s follow-up to her first short film, The Hunter (2012). Reflecting on why she chose to work with sand as a material in both films, she states that “I was really drawn to the beauty that you see in the light and the shading that you can build with sand.”⁶ This interplay of light and shade remains a key factor in The Crossing, a contemporary fable which tells the story of an ageing sea captain (voiced by Colin Friels) who puts his crew in danger when he takes his ship through a violent storm. The film is grim but beautiful – the sea captain becomes a tragic, almost pitiable figure – and the use of salt and sand materially connects it to its ocean setting. The subtle movements of the tiny grains enhance and amplify every breath.

Fish puns abound in Sarah Watt’s Catch of the Day (1990), which she completed as a student at the Victorian College of the Arts. Taking up a hand-painted and hand-drawn approach, the film speaks with biting humour and brutal honesty to the misogynist remarks women face everyday. Jane (voiced by Julie Forsyth) dreams of escaping the fish shop where she works, and the sexist remarks she’s frequently bombarded with – she hears them from men at the shop (including her boss), men on the radio, and even in her dreams. 

Jane imagines herself relaxing on a boat in the middle of the ocean, but her daydreams are rudely interrupted by the various men and their unwanted commentary: “C’mon girls, line up, you’re all smart little chookies I know,” calls out one vendor at the market. “Hey beautiful, what are you doing tonight, wanna have me baby?” shouts another. Jane, in turn, imagines these men as fish (“Mullet”, she mutters at one man. “Sardine”, at another). Even Jane’s female customers offer no respite, having fallen into the post-feminist trap of the transformative potential of diet culture (“Fish diet! If you’ve got a good body and you refuse to use it …”). Jane can at last no longer contain her disgust and rage, as her boss takes one final comment too far. Catch of the Day is not a ‘pretty’ film, but its exaggerated painterly style lends a surrealist edge that, in combination with the dialogue, gives the film a sharp, unapologetic and absurdist sense of humour.

Watt’s later animation, Small Treasures (1995) – which was completed in a similar painterly, hand-drawn approach to Catch of the Day – is a tender and diary-like reflection on pregnancy, as a different Jane (voiced by Rachel Griffiths) and her partner John (Leon Teague) prepare for the birth of their first child. Reflecting the subject matter, the animation is often more impressionistic. Jane goes through all the emotions that come with pregnancy – excitement, joy, fear, stress – which are explored with Watt’s familiar dry humour (one scene in a birth class stands out as the various attendees all try to name “positive” words that start with ‘P’ instead of “Pain”!) 

Watt also continues her self-aware incorporation of feminist themes. At one point, frustrated that every conversation she has seems to revolve around the baby, Jane shouts that she can talk about other things, sarcastically asking the dog, “What do you think about this backlash against feminist ideals which haven’t even been achieved yet?” These moments are contrasted with quieter, dreamier scenes of Jane at the beach, floating in the water. Through Watt’s painterly style, Jane’s body almost appears to become part of the ocean itself, as the animation ripples and wavers like the water’s surface. The film’s ending, where we learn that Jane’s baby has died, is devastatingly quiet. As Jane and John say goodbye, scattering his ashes against a vast and beautiful expanse of sky and water, the ashes themselves also seem to become part of the sky and sea. The final image of Jane floating in the ocean reconnects her not only with her son, but with the “army of women … who come to share stories of pain, joy, life and grief.” 

We end the program with Susan Danta’s Mother Tongue (2002). In 1976, a young girl records messages on tape for her father, who has moved overseas, to be delivered to him instead of letters. The girl and her mother will eventually leave Korea to join her father in Australia, and so the girl begins to practice English, which is also recorded on these tapes. Mother Tongue looks as if it was completed under camera, as it mimics the straight-ahead style of a film like Ada, but it was in fact done entirely digitally ⁷ The child’s voice echoes, crackly and distorted like a ghost from the past; Danta uses real language tapes (where the idea for the film emerged from) as a way to reflect on the fragmented nature of memory and of a loss that we might not even recall. Mother Tongue reflects on the distance between past and present through muted colour tones, with the occasional pop of colour from the young girl’s crayons. The animation, though digital, emulates the smudged effect of oil paints, further reinforcing the fuzzy indistinction of memory. Danta writes, “I wanted to express a sense of loss, which for me is an ambiguous emotion – neither positive or negative”.⁸ Towards the end of the film, the now adult Kim (voiced by Anita Beckman) states, “I have no memory of these voices my mother recorded for my father. They have been packed away by the distance of time. Mementos of a journey still being taken.” The loss of her mother tongue, at this stage of her journey at least, is simply stated as a matter of fact.

As a means of self-expression, animation provides almost endless possibilities and potential. The six films included in this program showcase a small fraction of animation’s diversity of styles and approaches, but also the medium’s ability to materialise the personal and the poetic. 

On a Full Moon (1997 Australia 17 mins)
Prod Co: Maracaibo Films, Australian Film Commission Dir, Scr: Lee Whitmore Prod: Lee Whitmore, Mark Stiles Ed: Henry Dangar, Sam Petty Phot: Kim Humpheys Mus: Ross Bolleter, Johann Brandl
Cast: Lee Whitmore, Noni Hazlehurst, Gabrielle Lloyd

Ada (2002 Australia 7 mins)
Dir, Scr, Prod: Lee Whitmore Mus: Robert De Visée
Cast: Lewis Argall, Rachel Argall, Holly Cunneen, Patrick Cunneen, Genevieve Jarrett

The Crossing (2016 Australia 12 mins)
Prod: Donna Chang Dir, Scr: Marieka Walsh Mus: Bree van Reyk, Jethro Woodward Ed: Dan Lee Sound: Alex Francis
Cast: Colin Friels

Catch of the Day (1990 Australia 11 mins)
Dir, Scr: Sarah Watt
Cast: Julie Forsyth, William McInnes, Kristina Schofield

Small Treasures (1995 Australia 15 mins)
Dir, Scr, Prod: Sarah Watt Ed: Ray Argall Mus: Rosemary Pearse
Cast: Rachel Griffiths, Maryrose Cuskelly, Leon Teague

Mother Tongue (2002 Australia 6 mins)
Dir: Susan Danta Prod: Susan Danta, Ann Shenfield
Cast: Anita Beckman

Endnotes