Ruth Lingford

Last updated

Ruth Lingford
Born (1953-05-20) 20 May 1953 (age 71)
London, England
NationalityEnglish
Education BA in fine arts and art history at Middlesex Polytechnic, MA at the Royal College of Art, Honorary Doctor of Arts from University of Wolverhampton
Occupation(s)Animator, senior lecturer, occupational therapist (former)

Ruth Lingford is an independent animator. Since 2005, she has taught at the Harvard University. She now holds a position as faculty member in the visual and environmental studies, where she is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies. She previously taught at the Royal College of Art and the National Film and Television School, UK. Before investing herself in animation, she was an occupational therapist working with the elders and people suffering from mental disorders. Lingford completed a BA in fine arts and art history at the Middlesex Polytechnic (Middlesex University) from 1987 to 1990 and a MA at the Royal College of Art until 1992. In 2008, she received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Wolverhampton. [1]

Contents

Animation work

Early work

Lingford began her work in animation when she made Baggage and Crumble (both 1992) as part of her MA. [2] Baggage and Crumble circulated in some film festivals, after their debut at the Royal College of Art's graduation show, including the Animefest Zagred, [3] Holland Animation Film Festival [4] and the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. [5] [6] After their limited festival run, and struggles to find stability, Lingford made What She Wants (1994) with funding of a grant from the Animate! programme (co-founded by Dick Arnall for the Arts Council of England/Channel 4). [7] For What She Wants, Lingford resorted to use her Amiga 1500 computer – having no access to animation equipments –, doing individual frames on Deluxe Paint. Lingford had learnt rudimentary usage of the computer in a workshop at the RCA, when hand-drawn animation remained the dominant technique. [8] What She Wants's individual images were saved across approximately 20 Floppy disks.

Death and the Mother and other acclaimed works

On her next project, Ruth Lingford was invited at the Museum of the Moving Image, for an 'unusual' residency. Developing a second commission for Channel 4, Death and the Mother (1997), Lingford returned again to her rudimentary methods of computer animation. [9] The creative process, however, would take place in full view of the people navigating through the museum : Lingford would be working in a glass room. [2] The film drew inspiration from German expressionist woodcut, and catapulted Lingford on the international animation scene. Upon completion, in 1997, Death and the Mother won many awards, including one at Annecy International Animated Film Festival of the same year. [2] The surface, content and reputation of Death and the Mother drew attention to Lingford from Orly Yadin and Sylvie Bringas. She was asked to collaborate on their project, Silence (1998), where Lingford would be working along Tim Webb on the animation of Silence's sequence. [10] Lingford worked on the first half of the film, which takes place in an animated Theresienstadt, while Webb worked on the second half, which takes place in Sweden. On Silence, she returned to Deluxe Paint to draw preliminary images which were finished by Yadin. [11] Overall, the visuals she helped build in Silence won several important awards including: the Gold Hugo for Animation Short at the 1998 Chicago International Film Festival and the Grand Prix of the 1999 Odense Film Festival. [12]


Lingford's following project, Pleasures of War, of the same year, moved against "the 'plastic' gloss-orientation of much computer-generated imagery". [13] Perhaps due to the success of Silence, she approached novelist and Christian theologian Sara Maitland, who Lingford remembered for her short story "The Swallow and the Nightingale" [14] (from her Far North and Other Dark Tales collection). Pleasures of War was scripted by Maitland, who also collaborated on the general design of the work, based on the deuterocanonical Book of Judith – a story in which two women bargain sexual favors to protect their city from besiegers. Within the film is collaged newsreel from armed conflicts around the world and the victims of these conflicts. [7]

From the 2000s onward

The Old Fools (2002) was Ruth Lingford's following project, again, commissioned by Channel 4. [12] It is an adaptation of the Philip Larkin's homonymous poem – written while her mother was in a nursing home. [8] In terms of style, The Old Fools marks a departure from Lingford's computer-drawn evocative imagery; its aesthetics, rather combining DV footage, are drawings and typography animated in After Effects and Painter. With the Shynola collective, Lingford worked next on a music video for the music band Unkle, An Eye for an Eye (2002). The collaboration was successful, and remained inlined with Lingford's previous imagery : "a sublimely creepy evocation of the biological drives and desires". [7] Lingford also collaborated on a fellow Harvard professors' film: Secrecy (2008), where her animated sequences served "to create a contrast between imaginary and literal realms of the secrecy system". [15] Likewise, she animated sequences from another film – We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân (2010) – by Anne Makepeace.

Little Deaths (2010), Lingford's latest standalone work, begun after she received a 2008–09 Harvard Film Study Center Fellowship. In the pre-production process, she wanted to 'interview' people about their orgasms. Lingford recalled she expected her interviewees to lack proper words to describe their private experiences, but they did not. She used their commentary, in "celebrat[ing] key aspects of our experience that are often suppressed," and continued to develop her experimental aesthetic of animation "to evoke the elusive physical and emotional experience of orgasm". [16]

As of recently, Lingford has been part of the band What Time Is It, Mr. Fox? for whom she has animated the song "The Ladies' Tree", [17] and sang as a back vocalist.

Filmography

As Director
TitleRelease DateBased OnRuntime
Little Deaths201011:58
UNKLE:Eye for an Eye20026:30
The Old Fools2002 The Old Fools by Philip Larkin 5:40
Pleasures of War1998 Book of Judith 11:00
Death and the Mother 1997 The Story of a Mother 10:37
What She Wants19945:00
Crumble19924:00
Baggage19924:17
Contributions
TitleRelease DateDirected byRole
We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân 2010Anne MakepeaceAnimator
Secrecy 2008 Peter Galison, Robb Moss Animator
Silence 1998Orly Yadin, Sylvie BringasAnimator
Series TitleEpisode TitleSeasonEpisodeRelease DateDirected byRole
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, or the Roly-Poly Pudding 121993Mike Stuart, Dianne Jackson Rendering artist
Appeared In
Series TitleEpisode TitleSeasonEpisodeRelease Date
Animation NationVisions of Childhood132005

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joanna Quinn</span> English film director and animator

Joanna Lisa Quinn is an English independent film director and animator.

Caroline Leaf is a Canadian-American filmmaker, animator, director, tutor and artist. She has produced numerous short animated films and her work has been recognized worldwide. She is best known as one of the pioneering filmmakers at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She worked at the NFB from 1972 to 1991. During that time, she created the sand animation and paint-on-glass animation techniques. She also tried new hands-on techniques with 70mm IMAX film. Her work is often representational of Canadian culture and is narrative-based. Leaf now lives in London, England, and is a tutor at The National Film and Television School. She maintains a studio in London working in oils and on paper and does landscape drawing with an iPad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Galison</span> American historian and philosopher of science

Peter Louis Galison is an American historian and philosopher of science. He is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in history of science and physics at Harvard University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzan Pitt</span> American film animator and painter (1943–2019)

Suzan Pitt Kraning, known professionally as Suzan Pitt, was an American film director, animator, painter, and fashion designer best known for her surrealist animated shorts, including Asparagus (1979).

Hitomi Shimizu (冷水ひとみ) is a keyboardist and composer of live action films, television programs, animated shorts and videogames. She is part of a musical duo with violinist Hiromi Nishida called Syzygys. Born in Nara, Japan, she majored in music composition at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. Her score for the 2001 comedy Waterboys, composed with Gakuji Matsuda, won the Japan Academy Prize for best film score. She also contributed music to the short film Mt. Head, by Kōji Yamamura, which won the top prize at the 27th Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. That film also won the Best Soundtrack Creation Award at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Littlenobody</span>

Littlenobody, founded by Karen Penman, is a small animation collective working from the South East of England.

Semiconductor is UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. They have been working together for over twenty years producing visually and intellectually engaging moving image works which explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, questioning how these devices mediate our experiences. Their unique approach has won them many awards, commissions and prestigious fellowships including; SónarPLANTA 2016 commission, Collide @ CERN Ars Electronica Award 2015, Jerwood Open Forest 2015 and Samsung Art + Prize 2012. Exhibitions and screenings include; The Universe and Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2016; Infosphere, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2016; Quantum of Disorder, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, 2015; Da Vinci: Shaping the Future, ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2014; Let There Be Light, House of Electronic Arts, Basel 2013 ; Field Conditions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2012; International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2012; New York Film Festival: Views from the Avant Garde, 2012; European Media Art Festival, 2012; Worlds in the Making, FACT, Liverpool 2011 ; Earth; Art of a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009 and Sundance Film Festival, 2009.

<i>Lipsett Diaries</i> 2010 Canadian film

Lipsett Diaries is a 2010 short animated documentary film about the life and art of collage filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, animated and directed by Theodore Ushev and written by Chris Robinson. The 14-minute film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, where Lipsett had worked from 1958 to 1972, before committing suicide in 1986. The film is narrated by Xavier Dolan.

Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Oscar nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life (2011). With their latest film, The Flying Sailor, they received several nominations and awards, including for the Best Canadian Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and on January 24, 2023, they received a nomination for the 95th Academy Awards under the category Best Animated Short Film.

<i>Bobby Yeah</i> 2011 British film

Bobby Yeah is a British stop motion adult animated body horror short film written, directed and animated by Robert Morgan. It was made independently and completed in 2011, and later uploaded on Robert's YouTube Channel in HD in 2017.

Katerina Athanasopoulou is a Greek film maker and animation artist.

Marie-Hélène Turcotte is a Canadian animation film director and artist. She studied architecture and produced two short animated films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oksana Cherkasova</span>

Oksana Cherkasova - Soviet and Russian director of animation films and animator. She received the State Prize of Russian Federation in 1996. She is a Member of the Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation, and Member of the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts and Science Nika Award.

<i>Hors Piste</i> 2019 French film

Hors Piste is a 2018 CG animated short film directed by Oscar Malet, Léo Brunel, Camille Jalabert & Loris Cavalier during their studies at l'École des Nouvelles Images, French animation school. This short has been presented and won awards in a number of festivals including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the Aspen Shortsfest, the Flickerfest, The Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films and the New York International Children's Film Festival where it won the Oscar Qualifying prize for best animation.

Sarah Van Den Boom is a French animation film director and co-founder of the Papy3D Productions production company.

Vera Neubauer is a Czech born British experimental filmmaker, animator, feminist activist and educator. She is known for her jarring, provocative and anti establishment approach. Her life's work spans genres, from cinematic short film to television series for children. Neubauer has received two BAFTA Cymru awards.

Louis' Shoes is a 2020 French animated short film directed by Marion Philippe, Kayu Leung, Théo Jamin and Jean-Géraud Blanc and produced by Anne Brotot with MoPA 3D School. The short has been presented in a number of festivals including in Clermont-Ferrand Festival, DOK Leipzig and won awards in 2021 in Stuttgart Trickfilm International Animated Film Festival, Student Academy Awards, and a Gold Medal in Best Animation International category.

Selma Bargach is a Moroccan filmmaker.

This Magnificent Cake! is a stop motion animated short film released in 2018, directed by Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef. A coproduction of companies from Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the film centres on the history of Belgian colonialism in Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Špela Čadež</span> Slovenian film director

Špela Čadež is a Slovenian director and film producer of animated films. She is mostly known for her use of the multiplane camera technique in her animated films.

References

  1. ↑ "University honorary degrees announced". wlv.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 Robinson, Chris. "Ruth Lingford: Old Halo Coffins Layered." Unsung Heroes of Animation. Eastleigh, UK : John Libbey, 2005. 254–264. Print.
  3. ↑ "animafest.hr". animafest.hr. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  4. ↑ "Person – Holland Animation Film Festival – HAFF". haff.nl. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  5. ↑ "International Short Film Festival – Clermont-Ferrand". clermont-filmfest.com. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  6. ↑ "International Short Film Festival – Clermont-Ferrand". clermont-filmfest.com. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 Pummel, Simon. "Thunder Under Oppresion." Animating the Unconscious: Desire, Sexuality, and Animation. Ed. Pilling, Jayne. London; New York : Wallflower Press, 2012. pp.70–86. Print.
  8. 1 2 Mitchell, Ben. "Interview: The Films of Ruth Lingford". Skwigly . Web. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  9. ↑ Wells, Paul. "The Language of Animation." Introduction to Film Studies. Ed. Nelmes, Jill. London; New York : Routledge, 2012. 254. Print.
  10. ↑ Winston, Brian. "Ça va de soi: The Visual Representation of Violence in the Holocaust Documentary." Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence. Eds. Brink, Joram Ten and Joshua Oppenheimer. London; New York : Wallflower Press, 2002. pp. 114. Print.
  11. ↑ Lingford, Ruth and Tim Webb. "Silence: The Role of the Animators." Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television since 1993. Eds. Haggith, Toby and Joanna Newman. London : Wallflower, 2005. 173–182. Print.
  12. 1 2 Bendazzi, Giannalberto. Animation: A World History: Volume III: Contemporary Times. CRC Press, 2015. pp. 77. Print.
  13. ↑ Wells, Paul. Animation: Genre and Authorship. London; New York : Wallflower, 2002. 29. Print.
  14. ↑ N.a. "Ruth Lingford: The Pleasures of War – Interview." Animating the Unconscious: Desire, Sexuality, and Animation. Ed. Pilling, Jayne. London; New York : Wallflower Press, 2012. 77–78. Print.
  15. ↑ Walker, Mia P. "Directors Reveal Truth About 'Secrecy'." The Harvard Crimson. Web. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  16. ↑ Honess Roe, Annabelle. Animated Documentary. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. pp. 123. Palgrave Connect. Web. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
  17. ↑ "Upcoming Events What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?". rockyneckartcolony.org. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.