The Persistence of Animation

A Film of One’s Own: The Animated Self-Portraits of Young Contemporary Female Animators

Abstract: This paper will analyse the animated self-portraits created by contemporary young and emerging women in animation, and by that means, elucidate significant differences between this new generation and previous ones of female animators. Through their animated self-portraits, the earlier animatrices explored their own identity as women and artists, developing new discourses and models for a subgenre that existed from the early days of cinema animation. But the animated female self-portrayal of the new generation comes closer to documentary and has more universal concerns, appealing to a wider audience and reaching theatrical distribution, as Marjane Satrapi’s long feature Persepolis (2007) exemplifies and which will be a focus of the paper.

Biographical Statement: Maria Lorenzo teaches animation subjects at the Department of Design, Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). In 2006 she obtained her PhD in Fine Arts. She presented papers at the 19th SAS Conference in Portland (2007) and the National PCA/ACA Conference in San Francisco (2008). The current paper extends the line of research begun with her work “Through the Looking-Glass: The Self-Portrait of the Artist and the Re-Start of Animation,” presented as a poster at the 20th SAS Conference in Bournemouth. She is also an animation filmmaker.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Animated documentaries, Animation filmmakers, Women in animation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.