London Animation Club brings together two filmmakers to show and discuss a selection of their work.
Joan Ashworth and Laurie Hill met at the RCA over 20 years ago. Their work connects through a fondness for using animation to explore archives. Ashworth approaches the life and work of artist and campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst using archive footage, animation and original interviews with her only son Richard. Hill excavates, rummages and rearranges with a playful eye and taste for absurdity. For both, fragmentary material often finds a fitting shape through collage, montage and fun.
The event is introduced by Martin Pickles and the screening is followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
The film programme includes:
Joan Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist, Writer, Fighter (Joan Ashworth/UK/34 mins)
Photograph Of Jesus (Laurie Hill/UK/7 mins)
My First Taste Of Death (Laurie Hill/UK/10 mins)
Sir John Lubbock’s Pet Wasp (Laurie Hill and Osbert Parker/UK/2 mins)
High Street Repeat (Laurie Hill and Osbert Parker/UK/4 mins)
Joan Ashworth
Joan is an artist & filmmaker working with fiction and creative non-fiction. From 1994 to 2015, she headed up the internationally renowned Animation Dept. at the Royal College of Art, London. She studied at the NFTS and co-founded 3 Peach Animation and Seed Fold Films, making commercials and title sequences including the opening titles for Batman 1 directed by Tim Burton. Her short films The Web (1987), How Mermaids Breed (2002), Mushroom Thief (2010) & Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist Writer Fighter (2024) have screened and been awarded internationally. Joan has published on Animation Therapy and worked with a team funded by the Medical Research Council looking at how animation can engage young patients in giving feedback on their health treatment. Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist, Writer, Fighter excavates Sylvia’s radical life, through an archive of artefacts left behind, giving a sense of Pankhurst’s restless energy. Joan is interested in how animation can be a valuable tool in exploring difficult issues.
Laurie Hill
Laurie is an award-winning multi-media animator and director based in London. He often works with archival and found materials. He studied at the Royal College of Art and his work has screened at many festivals and galleries worldwide including Sundance, AFI Fest, Telluride Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art New York, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, New Art Gallery Walsall, Cornerhouse Manchester and Museum Of London. He was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2007 and was finalist in Jerwood Moving Image Awards 2008. His film Photograph Of Jesus won Best Experimental Short Film at Chicago International Film Festival, Best Animated Short at Seattle International Film Festival, Best Of British Jury Award at Encounters Film Festival and the McLaren Award at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Recently, he co-directed the experimental, archive-delving collage film High Street Repeat in collaboration with Osbert Parker.
London Animation Club is a monthly event for animators and people interested in animation in the capital, created and curated by Martin Pickles. Club members and regular guests meet and present their work in informal surroundings conducive to talking and sharing ideas. Our guests range from well-known figures, such as Phil Davies, the producer of Peppa Pig, and Peter Firmin, the co-creator of Bagpuss, through to award-winning independent animators like Emma Calder, along with experimental filmmakers and academics, with much in between. In 2024 we started doing special events at the Garden Cinema.