ANIMATION BY THE HUBLEYS: JOHN, FAITH, AND EMILY

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the animation studio founded by John and Faith Hubley, a husband and wife team of independent, New York-based filmmakers. Through their company Storyboard (later renamed The Hubley Studio), they created a distinct style of animation. Their films are suffused with a vibrant visual style, imbued with the political and social concerns of the world around them, and enriched musically by the couple's ongoing associations with a number of noted jazz artists, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, and Quincy Jones. The Hubleys were also pioneers in their treatment of children in animated films, using the voices of their own children Mark and Ray in Moonbird (which won an Academy® Award) and Emily and Georgia in Windy Day. Emily Hubley created animated films in her own right, establishing an east coast studio, Hubbub, Inc. (Her film Set Set Spike screened at Tribeca in 2003 and her animation for Original Child Bomb screened at Tribeca in 2004). Emily's animated films portray the interior, subjective world of her characters, in which people and objects are in a constant state of transmutation. The morphing shifts in the dimensionality of objects, coupled with hand-drawn animated camera moves and constantly changing perspectives between close-up, long shots, and different points of view, brilliantly demonstrate this artist's grasp of the expressive qualities of the film medium. Georgia Hubley co-directed The Tower with Emily, and her band Yo La Tengo has provided the soundtracks to five of Emily's films, including Pigeon Within and Her Grandmother's Gift. All prints in this program are in 35mm, except The Tower, which is in 16mm. The 35mm preservation print of Moonbird is courtesy of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other prints are courtesy of The Hubley Studio and Hubbub, Inc.