Animated films by Faith and Emily Hubley will be screened on Tuesday, March 4, at 5:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall, Art and Architecture Building, 180 York St. The event is free and open to the public. For mobility-impaired access, call 432-2645.
A long-time member of the Yale faculty, Faith Hubley is a senior critic in filmmaking at the School of Art. She has designed, directed and produced 19 animated films celebrating life and the art of diverse cultures.
Emily Hubley, Faith’s daughter, is a visiting lecturer at Yale’s School of Art this semester. Her animations have been shown at the NY Expo of Short Films, the Hiroshima and Ottawa festivals of animated films, the New York Film Festival, the American Film Festival, and on television.
The March 4 program will feature Faith Hubley’s 25-minute film, “My Universe Inside Out,” which provides a personal context for her life and work. The film recalls “infancy, childhood, turbulent adolescence, adventurous youth, life with John Hubley and our four children, sudden death, crisis and joy, over 50 years of ceaseless work and struggle, and my present search for meaning,” says Ms. Hubley, who narrates the film and plays cello on the soundtrack. The intimate self-portrait chronicles moments ranging from the tragic — child abuse and rape — to the seriocomic — her parents burn down the family home having forgotten to pay the insurance premiums — to the miraculous — she bears a child despite being told she cannot conceive.
Other short films that will be screened are “Delivery Man,” “Enough” and “Secret Religion” by Emily Hubley, and “Rainbows of Hawaii” and “Her Grandmother’s Gift,” collaborations between Faith and Emily Hubley.
Works by Emily Hubley will include “The Girl with her Head Coming Off,” currently showing on Nickelodeon; and “Woman to Woman,” animation illustrating poetry by contemporary American women, previously aired on Lifetime.
Faith Hubley worked in theater in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a film editor and script supervisor. She returned to New York to work on Sidney Lumet’s “Twelve Angry Men” and James Wong Howe’s Harlem Globetrotter film, “Go Man Go.” In 1955 she and her late husband, John, established an independent animation studio. Their partnership produced films such as “Moonbird,” “Windy Day” and “Everybody Rides the Carousel,” which broke new ground in the world of animation. The Hubleys employed a free-form visual style and used improvised dialogue, children’s voices and jazz artists such as Benny Carter and Dizzy Gillespie. Their 22 films received scores of prizes, including seven Academy Award nominations and three Oscars.
Faith Hubley has been honored at the Cannes, Venice, and London film festivals and has received 14 CINE Golden Eagles. She was the honorary president of the 1994 Hiroshima International Animated Film Festival and won the Gold Animation Award at the 1994 New York Expo for her film, “Seers and Clowns.” In 1995 she was honored at the National Gallery, D.C. and received a lifetime achievement award from the Black Maria — Thomas A. Edison Film Festival.
Emily Hubley won the Gold Animation Award at the 1996 NY Expo of Short Films for “Her Grandmother’s Gift”; “Enough” won the Silver Animation Award at that festival in 1994. She won the Director’s Choice Award at the Black Maria festival twice.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented a special program exploring the collaborative relationship between the art of Faith and Emily Hubley in 1995, and will screen their work again in December, 1997, in conjunction with a Hubley retrospective that is set for January 1998.