Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Animation, Clare Kitson, continues to commission difficult but award-winning work, much of which has been directed by women. For reasons adequately covered elsewhere, and especially in Jayne Pilling's introduction to her book, Women and Animation (BFI, 1992), animation has always been able to accommodate women. So, the present animation boom in the UK, taking place in a late 20th century climate which is generally more supportive of women, has sustained many female directors.

Over the last few years, women have worked in every genre: personal--Karen Watson's Daddy's Little Piece of Dresden China (1988) and her new film Sweet Heart (1995) address the issues of childhood sexual abuse and anorexia from an autobiographical point of view; lyrical--Susan Young's Carnival (1985), Karen Kelly's Egoli (1989) and Stressed (1994); documentary--Marjut Rimminen's Some Protection (1987), the Leeds Animation Workshop's Through the Glass Ceiling (1995) both to do with the treatment of women, in prison in Rimminen's film and at work in the Leeds film; experimental--as in Vera Neuebauer's The World of Children (1984) or her Lady of the Lake (1995); abstract--Erica Russell's Feet of Song (1989) and Triangle (1995); narrative without dialogue--Joan Ashworth's The Web, Alison Snowden's Second Class Mail (1984); narrative with dialogue--Sarah Ann Kennedy's Nights (1992) or any of Candy Guard's many short films.

Kitson's Muffia
Narrative is no longer the province of male filmmakers--if it ever was. Certainly, when Kitson's budget was increased in 1994 and she modified her policies to include series work, she felt that only Sarah Ann Kennedy and Candy Guard were able to write dialogue and structure narrative sufficiently well to move forward in this direction. As a result of this bold move, Kitson has been accused, unfairly, of running a 'Muffia'; but, in fact, her decision to move into series production, a program space previously occupied exclusively by producers of children's programming, has once again extended the boundaries of animation.

In gratitude Crapston Villas, Kennedy's model animation series about the flat-dwelling inhabitants of a run down Victorian house in a seedy London street, won Best New Program in the 1996 Broadcast Awards (Broadcast is a major British trade magazine), and for the first time, animation went up against live action and won--a major coup for Kitson and Channel 4. It's unsurprising, therefore, that Kitson's irritation is only half-concealed when she notes that the BBC has now also started commissioning adult animation series.

Pond Life
Kitson's real move forward is into mainstream comedy and out of the animation ghetto. She has been so successful that she will now have to watch her back for product-hungry comedy commissioning editors straying onto her patch. Neither Crapston Villas nor Candy Guard's Pond Life are Grand Prix winners at traditional animation festivals like Annecy or Zagreb--the source of many awards, honors and prizes for Channel 4. But both Kennedy and Guard have expressed a desire to move into live action. Animation is perhaps, for both, a route through the glass ceiling.

Candy Guard's Pond Life

Candy Guard has been working on Pond Life since 1992, when the pilot, I Want a Boyfriend ... Or Do I?, was co-commissioned by S4C and Channel 4. The 13 x 11 minute series premieres on Channel 4 later this year. Kitson put the Pond Life concept into research before giving the series the green light. "When results of the research came back," Kitson said, sounding surprised, "the male participants had identified Pond Life as to do with 'women issues,' whereas I believe that the issues that Candy addresses are universal."

Kitson was being disingenuous. The issues--career, driving test, clothes, friends, rock music, holidays--are universal, but the tale on them is assuredly not--women may go awkward, silent and tongue-tied the minute they think a bloke fancies them (see I Want A Boyfriend ... Or Do I?), but men get loud, show off and clown about in front of the girl they fancy ... (Or do they?).

Not that Guard thinks of herself as a feminist. "It's not a word that I use about myself. I'm much more likely to describe myself as a socialist," is her initial response to my question; but knowing that I will ask her if she is a feminist, Guard has consulted her boyfriend on the matter, who clearly thinks she is one--"Because I get cross about things," she says. "I get especially cross about women's role in the film industry, both as actresses and creators. Taking sex scenes, for instance, in which male directors forever have women bouncing up and down on top of the male actors, presumably so that you see their tits better. Even in Toy Story, which I really enjoyed, I felt the filmmakers could have tried harder. Why did all the toys have to be male?"

Guard respects Kitson's judgment although she doesn't necessarily always agree with it. In fact, when her friend and colleague, Sarah Ann Kennedy, was commissioned to make Crapston Villas before Pond Life got to go ahead, Guard confesses to being dismayed. Crapston Villas offers a different kind of humor than Pond Life. It's more lavatorial--the dialogue sparkles with smut and filth--so it's more British and perhaps, for that reason, easier to commission.