The Society for Animation Studies (SAS) wrapped up its annual conference yesterday, following four days of talks, panels, and screenings (and one rowdy animation pub quiz). As ever, the event brought together animators and scholars from around the world to discuss a dizzying range of animation-related topics. The conference theme – Sustaining Animation – established its position as one of serious engagement with ‘real world’ issues from the outset, and themes around animated documentary were well represented, both in panels specifically dedicated to the form, and across other areas of research.
Dr Yijing Wang spoke about the use of ethnographic animation on themes of ‘oral literature’, while Yunhuan Tan discussed animated documentary and digital animation practices – including generative AI – as tools for preserving and revitalizing embroidery traditions in minority communities. He argued for animated documentary’s use to preserve endangered cultural heritage, focusing on embroidery and textile tradition as a practice that carries collective memory and tradition, as ‘patterns encode myths, rituals, blessings’.
Dr Mary Martins presented her work around the histories of African and Carribean communities in London’s Thamesmead through documentary and animation. Her project Made in Thamesmead (2024), Addresses a lack of black British representation in Thamsemead’s – and wider British – archives. Intersecting with social science and humanities, Martins explained that the project uses animation ‘as a representational and archival tool’ in archiving histories that haven’t been well documented or preserved, as well as as an ‘effective collaborative tool to address social and political injustice’. Martins described how her mixed media ‘collage’ approach top the work can allow juxtaposition within a frame, emphasizing the and exploring the complexity of her subject matter.
Emily Ramsay outlined the structure and outputs of a 12-week animated documentary course at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. Ramsay described the course, which was founded by Miriam Harris in 2015, and which produces some punchy and well produced 40 second nonfiction pieces by students, as ‘connecting abstract ideas to lived experience’ and promoting animated documentary as a ‘way of seeing’.
Animator Xue Han described her work on the collaborative animated documentary Hunger by the Sea (dir. Sue Sudbury, 2018). She described how she conceived the images for the film, listening to recorded interviews and imagining the speakers, and discussed the way in which the project initiated a transformation of her identity from a commercially-directed animator, to a research-led animator, and ultimately to a practice-led research, as she now works with animation ‘not as a product but as a method of research’.
Terry Wragg from the Leeds Animation Workshop (LAW) discussed LAW’s ongoing work with animated documentary, participatory and socially engaged filmmaking, while Dr Samantha Moore’s talk offered insight into her process of creating an Enhanced Audio Description for the animated documentary Visible Mending (2023).
Dr Sally Pearce spoke about the animation of memory, and how the ‘meditative’ process of animation can facilitate the breaking of taboos and working through of trauma. Her talk included reference to a number of 1970s women’s independent animations that could now be categorized as animated documentary although at the time of release they would not have been.
Anitha Balachandran’s presentation looked at a history of public health films about malaria, using films that mingled science with contemporaneous colonial morality to show early animated documentary as at times little more than ‘state sponsored propaganda’, promoting racism, misogyny, and prejudice.
Dr Alex Widdowson discussed his practice-based work on animated documentary ethics and showed a teaser for his feature film in development, an animated documentary on the neurodiversity movement, whicle Gunnar Strøm described ‘three affinities of animation, especially animated documentaries’, as stylization (simplifying a subject), distillation (capturing its essence), and generalization (making it relevant to all).
Animation and politics was well covered. Dr Reza Yousefzadeh Tabasi spoke about the use of generative AI by the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Movement to create large quantities of animated political content, and the benefits of this, while Maryam Mohajer, in discussion with Karen Redrobe, described the relationship of her fictional films to her own lived experience and personal memories.
Dr Susan Young described how the influence of the lecturer Ray Fields at Liverpool Polytechnic in the 1980s informed her move toward nonfiction and socially engaged approaches to animation. She explained how her film Thin Blue Lines (1981), about the Liverpool 8 uprising, gave her an opportunity to produce animation directly about the world around her. The ‘meditative’ process of the animation also eased her mental health problems of the time and this understanding continued through her career, ultimately to her practice based PhD which explored ways in which animation can ‘process or metabolise trauma’.
Vincenzo Maselli’s paper on the feature autobiographical film No Dogs or Italians Allowed (2022) showed how the interaction between the director’s hand and voice and the puppet means that ‘ the director is an archivist in the film’ who ‘tries to fill the gaps’ in his memory through the narrative provided by the puppet of his grandmother. He described how the film uses the potentials of stop-motion ‘to reimagine history made out of touch, fragility and reconstruction’ and how the director ‘gives meaning and specific roles to each material used in the narrative’.
Laryssa Moreira Prado’s talk explored self-representation by women and feminist aesthetics in Brazilian animation, particularly focusing on two short films: O Projeto do Meu Pai (2016) and Guaxuma (2018). Agathe Pias spoke about animated autobiography, looking at the use of materiality, technique, and reflexivity as a ‘narrative element’ in films, and giving examples to illustrate the suitability of animation to represent ‘complex blurry concepts’, also discussing No Dogs or Italians Allowed and Guaxuma alongside other films.
I couldn’t be everywhere in this rich and sprawling conference and no doubt missed many other fascinating talks and discussions around animated nonfiction. I’m looking forward to seeing what publications and further research spring from the work presented. Congratulations to the Society for Animation Studies and the conference hosts London College of Communication for a successful and memorable event.
The full schedule and all abstracts for the 2025 Society for Animation Studies Conference can be found here.
Article by Carla MacKinnon
