British filmmaker Joanna Quinn (Birmingham, 1962) was the godmother and special guest of the third edition of the Animation Film Festival IMAXINARY From A Coruña, which ended this Sunday after gathering outstanding figures from this field from different parts of the world. Quinn is an authentic legend within world animation and his works have won numerous international awards such as Bafta and Emmy, in addition to having three Oscars nominations: The Wife of Bath (1988), Famous Fred (1996) and Affairs of the art (2021). His character Beryl, who was born in 1988, has become a feminist icon, although she explains that we must not take it so seriously. In any case, many women can be reflected in a protagonist who escapes the beauty canon that accompanies the woman in the world of cinema and only tries to fulfill their dreams, no matter how crazy they are.
Quinn declares himself fascinated by the work of women like Haneen Koraz, who is able to teach animation workshops for children in the middle of a gaza razed by war. In addition, he sees with optimism that there are very scarce budget films that defeat the big international studies even in competitions at the highest level such as the Oscars. In matters such as Brexit, the British filmmaker has detected an increase in racism in the society of that country after the exit of the EU and a deterioration of public services such as health by the departure of Britain of thousands of nurses who have returned to their countries and have not been replaced.
Why was you interested in animation cinema? What advantages does it offer to express yourself to conventional cinema?
When I started, what interested me was how to give movement to my drawings. When I discovered animation in a graphic design course I realized that this was what I needed. I was opened a new world, because I was not really interested in making movies with real characters: what I was looking for was to give life to my drawings, it was like playing to be God in a way.
Beryl’s character was born in 1988 and has become the main protagonist in his work. What did he seek to count through her when she started and how it has evolved over the years?
The character was born working with my partner Les Mills (his partner and coguionist). He comes from Working Class While I am more from London middle class, but we both wanted to tell stories about common people doing extraordinary things. Beryl is the typical invisible middle class woman who still has desires and wants to get things. I think the fact that she is a common woman who does extraordinary things is surprising for the public. We have always tried to make films that will tell stories and Beryl’s character has some politician for presenting a woman as someone who does things. Until I got to university, I always drew male characters. When I started interested in politics and feminism, I wondered why I never drew women. That’s when I started doing it and Beryl emerged. It was easier to draw men from men with strong personalities and, nevertheless, I was not so easy with women, but I began to do it. We could say that it was a conscious decision: drawing a real woman and that is credible.
Throughout its long career, in the world of animation there has been a great technological revolution that has changed a lot to the industry. How do you see that evolution to which artificial intelligence has been incorporated?
I am optimistic, I have seen incredible works that have been done with artificial intelligence and that could not have been done without it. However, this technology also leads us to question what is true and what does not. Something similar to what happened with the Photoshop In photography. This meant that reality began to be questioned because this tool allowed changes in images and alter reality, now something similar happens in the world of cinema. But the arrival of AI does not concern me so much about its effects on the cinema and what is affecting life in general. I am worried, for example, that my students use AI too much, even to build the scripts, and that does not face the challenge of writing a story. And of course I am worried that AI can affect employment a lot. Personally, it does not affect me too much because I will continue working in the same way. In my films, all the drawings are made by hand and, obviously, then we use the technology to perform the animation, the assembly … I have no problem that technology is used to help in the subsequent tasks, but at first the manual work is always.
European animation has always preserved a certain artisanal profile against the most industrial character of American animation. Is this in danger because of the new technological tools or will it survive?
On the one hand, I am somewhat worried about what can happen to the artistic part of the work, because when I correct the works that I commission my students I find that there are many similarities between them, surely because the designs have been made with the same tools. However, when I go to animation festivals in different parts of the world I can see very good jobs, carried out with very different techniques, experiencing new things and that is fantastic. This year, for example, we have encountered a letona movie, Flowmade by a small team of six people with a scarce budget and that has broken the big international studies and their megaproductions in the most important awards (Flowdirected by Gints Zilbalodis, has won the Oscar and other prominent international awards). In the last five years I have seen at the United States Cinema Academy a desire to have more films from other parts of the world, made by people from other races and maybe we are now watching some results. It is also true that now in the Academy there are more votes from European and South American countries and maybe that is making more independent productions triumph. I think that is very hopeful.
In his films he has always discussed controversial issues, with political implications. Today we live very complicated times with wars such as those of Gaza and Ukraine or everything that is happening in the USA with Donald Trump again in power. Does the cinema still have and the animation in particular the power to attract attention to the public about what is happening in the world?
I think so, in fact one of the things I am doing today is to try to support that an animation cinema in Gaza is still doing. I know a woman from Gaza, Haneen Koraz, who is doing film workshops there with children, with disabled people and are making short On my Instagram page. And it is incredible, because they create funny stories and full of humanity in the midst of that disaster. I realize how important the work she is doing is because she is really changing the world through animation. Sometimes I get angry at something, but I realize that this is useless and yet, what she is doing in Gaza really manages to change things because it makes the world better for the people they are suffering. This kind of thing keeps your spirit high when everything seems to be collapsing. There are reasons for hope with what happens in the middle of the catastrophe.
His character Beryl has become a feminist icon, how has the character evolved in these years where women’s demands have changed as more rights were achieved for them?
In the different films I have made with Beryl as the protagonist she always struggled to get something and always failed. However, in the last film she achieves her goal and becomes an artist and even uses her husband as a model, which manages to turn around the situation that used to be common in art. I find it difficult to talk about great issues about women through Beryl’s character because she is still a character, a construction. It has become more complex and the interesting thing for me is to explore different aspects of his personality, his dreams, his mistakes, etc.
What is happening in Britain after Brexit, especially in the world of art and culture?
It is a problem especially because it is encouraging racism and of course we can say that Great Britain is a more racist place after Brexit. In the field of animation cinema, before Brexit, many people from other parts of Europe worked in studies and now it is more complicated to come. Brexit does not affect me too personally, I also have the Irish nationality, but if you talk to people you realize how horrible and stupid that decision was. There were people who thought that Brexit could improve some things but now it is being seen that it was not so, especially in fields such as health, which now works worse since there were many nurses who came from Europe and many of them have gone. The same has happened in other sectors, there has been no replacement for these workers and everything is worse. It looks in people, nobody is happy. In the early years of Brexit there were hardly talk in the media, because politicians did not want to go against what people had voted, but now they start talking about it. I am sorry especially for the youngest, who are not going to have so many opportunities to go to study or work out now that we no longer belong to the European Union.
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