In years characterized by social networks overflowing with drawings, comics and short films generated by Artificial Intelligence, for the lovers of animated cinema Joanna Quinn’s works represent a sort of remedy: fortunately someone still believes in the power of the sign, in the possibility of creating a different world, recognizable but reshaped by the trait of the artist. And several are the signs in Quinn’s films: her works – all distinguished by nervous, dynamic sketches, with faces and above all distorted bodies and made caricatures – overflow with lines and graphic afterthoughts, which the artist deliberately chooses not to delete, thus making the viewer a participant in the creative process. A process that forces the characters to undergo surreal mutations, as if the animator’s hand dominated her rationality to identify the best (and not necessarily the most logical) graphic solutions.
Born in Birmingham, she attended a preparatory course in art at Goldsmith College (University of London) and later obtained a degree in Graphic Design from Middlesex University. Quinn then moved to Cardiff, Wales, in 1985, where she founded the Beryl Productions company together with her partner, Les Mills, screenwriter and producer. The studio is named after Beryl, the anti-heroine present in almost all the short films made by the artist: a middle-aged married worker, employed first in a confectionery workshop and then in a Japanese factory called “Mishima”, situated in a Welsh town. Beryl – whose cultural background is similar to the one of the characters in some of Mike Leigh’s films – is incredibly vital and very provocative for those years, the end of the 1980s; the nonconformism of the character is evident right from the first film that sees her as the protagonist, Girls’ Night Out (1987), a short film produced by Channel Four and part of a cycle of films directed by women animators. In the film, the ‘great night’ that Beryl spends with a group of friends ends with a mockery against a rough male stripper. Quinn’s trait is already fully mature, both in the physical characterization of the character – smiling, with glasses, not particularly athletic, with an extraordinarily expressive face – and in the gags, which here recall certain Tex Avery graphic gimmicks (Beryl’s eyes that literally come out of the orbits during the striptease). Beryl’s body, on the other hand, will be a key aspect in all the subsequent cinematic works.
In Body Beautiful (1991) the protagonist is once again Beryl, this time dealing with a colleague, Vince – a crude chauvinist – during a beauty contest organized by their employers. Initially reluctant and intimidated – mainly for being overweight and for Vince’s sharp jokes – Beryl finally manages to impose herself, after undergoing a hard training and, above all, after having proudly claimed her imperfect physicality. The song that closes the short film ridicules all the unrealistic expectations of women, especially in Western animation: until Body Beautiful, in fact, the female characters had mostly been portrayed in a stereotypical or in any case passive way. The feminine physicality will also play a fundamental role in Elles (1992), a short insert made for a series of animated films produced by the Musée d’Orsay, in which two Junoesque models of Toulouse Lautrec take a break from the poses, and also in the subsequent The Wife of Bath (1998), made for a multi-handed adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, in which the protagonist – a rapist knight – must make amends for his crime by trying to understand women’s deepest desires.
However, Beryl remains Quinn’s most beloved character, and it is interesting to note that the reaffirmation of her physicality in the films that were released after Body Beautiful is also accompanied by artistic aspirations; both in Dreams & Desires – Family Ties (2006) and Affairs of the Art (2021) Beryl tries to create, as a director of amateur films in the first film and as a designer in the second. And if the outcomes can also be tragicomic – her attempts to film a wedding with the help of a dog-cameraman end up causing accidents and blowing the lid off – this does not detract from the genuine ambitions of the character, who in her dreams sees herself transformed into a Renaissance woman, portrayed in an explosion of physical nudity that refers to Reubens and Botticelli. In Affairs of the Art – Oscar-nominated, as well as in the previous The Wife of Bath – physicality explodes into three distinct characters: that of Beryl’s burly husband, Ivor, who awkwardly has to lend himself to acting as a muse and model for his wife; that of Beverly, Beryl’s sister, a narcissistic taxidermist who transforms herself in a kind of living mannequin with an impossible physique, after undergoing a series of plastic surgery operations; and Beryl herself, still employed in a factory, who in turn tries to recreate herself as a punk artist and in whose enthusiasm and for the first time bitterness and frustration seem to make their way.
Quinn’s substantially positive vision is in fact never completely detached from reality: with the only exception of Famous Fred (1996), also nominated for an Oscar and taken from a children’s book by Posy Simmonds, with a singing cat as leading character, her artistic approach never lacks solid ties with the real world, and is often characterized by strong irony towards society and the history of the United Kingdom. The most obvious example is Britannia (1993), awarded with the Leonardo Da Vinci Prize, in which a Bulldog – a symbol of British imperialism, historically represented in numerous satirical illustrations of the journals Punch and Illustrated London News – sees its world influence first rise and then dissolve rapidly. The film is a particularly effective anti-colonial satire and perhaps the most graphically surreal work ever made by Quinn, who is today a deservedly established artist, awarded – among the other prizes – with two Emmy awards, 4 BAFTA awards and honored in 2008 with an exhibition, Drawings that Move, aimed at celebrating her artistic strength, her irony and her inimitable trait.
Davide Giurlando
Britannia
Direction/Animation: Joanna Quinn
Date: 1993
Length: 5’
It’s an historical and provocative short film which tells about British Colonialism through all its most important features, but narrated from the point of view of a giant bulldog that plays with the world as if it were his toy, until he becomes small and is walked on a leash by a lady.
Girls night out
Direction/Animation: Joanna Quinn
Date: 1987
Length: 6’
This short film tells about a ladies ‘night out watching a male striptease on Beryl’s birthday, among screams, laughter and alcohol.
Affairs of the art
Director: Joanna Quinn
Date: 2021
Length: 16’23”
In this short film Beryl, the protagonist of almost all Joanna Quinn’s works, tells us about her life and her eccentric family through anecdotes from her childhood, studded with strange interests and habits. The difference between Beryl and her sister Beverly is the focal point, with Beverly’s singular attraction and her current wealthy life and Beryl’s antithetical love for art, with which though she couldn’t ever manage to work.
