Binocular Briefs – A Tribute to Emma Calder | Animation World Network

AWN’s latest survey of under-the-radar animated shorts currently making their way through the festival circuit or newly available for online viewing pays tribute to the talented British artist and collage master who passed away September 26 at age 65 from cancer.

In this month's Binocular Briefs, we pay tribute to the films of British artist and animator Emma Calder, who passed away from cancer at age 65 on September 26, 2024. You can learn more about her life and work here.

Calder began creating films in the early 1980s, with collage as a central element. Her innovative use of unconventional materials brought her work to life in surprising ways.

Calder’s connection to collage began early. Growing up in 1960s Notting Hill, she was immersed in cutting-edge ads, pop art, and the eclectic mix of Portobello Road Market. “The market was a collage itself - full of Victorian junk, hippy stuff, and relics from the Boer War to World War II,” she recalled.

Influences like Yellow Submarine, Terry Gilliam’s animation, and a skating teacher’s girlfriend working at a design studio further fueled her passion for becoming a designer once her skating days were over.

1984 (co-directed with Susan Young and Isabelle Perrichon, 1983)

In the late 1970s, Calder studied at Chelsea School of Art, where the punk movement shaped her use of techniques like frottage. She also drew inspiration from Eduardo Paolozzi, whose 1977 exhibition had a lasting impact. In 1983, Calder and Susan Young created 1984 using Paolozzi’s traced magazine images. “We re-copied and cut them into new sequences,” Calder recalled in a 2023 interview. “We built the narrative without Paolozzi’s input, but every part came from his photocopies.”

lkla Moor Baht Hat (1981)

This student film, made at the Royal College of Art, combines paper cut-outs with various collage materials - worms crafted from photocopied toothpaste, ducks from potato prints and drawings, and a gravestone made with rubbings and watercolors, later photocopied. Based on a traditional Yorkshire song, the comic cautionary tale follows a young man who, after pursuing a woman without a hat, catches a cold and dies. But that’s not the end - his corpse is eaten by worms, which are eaten by ducks, who are then devoured by his friends. A darkly humorous take on the circle of life.

Springfield (1986)

Combining crayons, ink, and mixed media, this inventive piece - featuring, as you might have guessed, a cat, a human-like vacuum cleaner, and a bingo hall - sees Calder exploring themes that would resurface in her final film, Beware of Trains: anxiety, obsession, loneliness, and fear.

Random Person (2012)

Random Person is an online stop-motion series inspired by a troubling incident: Calder witnessed a man unconscious outside a pub. “I was in a friend’s boyfriend’s car, waiting for a lift,” she wrote. “When the boyfriend started driving, I said, ‘Mind that man, don’t run him over.’ I couldn’t see him anymore and got worried. The boyfriend asked, ‘What man?’ His girlfriend just yawned, ‘Just a random person.’”

Shocked by the indifference, Calder reflected: “If he’s random, what am I?” This sparked the creation of Random Person, a character made from a collage of fabrics, doll arms, and her partner Julian’s hair. The series, spanning about 40 episodes, leans toward assemblage, with Calder gathering found objects - dice, teddy bears, puzzles, and dollhouse miniatures. Her use of these items echoes the collage tradition of incorporating advertising imagery. The result is a surreal blend of real and unreal, where personal identity blurs with mass media’s distorted projections of impossible utopias.

Random Person 1: My Name is Fake

Random Person 8: I love him or I love him not

Random Person 25: No Pine Needles

Random Person 40 (Halloween is Over)

The Queen’s Monastery, (1998)

Inspired by Leoš Janáček’s The Sinfonietta, The Queen’s Monastery is a remarkable six-minute animated mini-opera exploring love, war, regret, guilt, and transformation. A technical tour-de-force, the film’s use of watercolors beautifully conveys themes of fragility, change, and memory, as the entire narrative unfolds within the woman’s mind. Calder’s vivid palette delivers an emotional fireworks display, capturing both the intensity of loss and the hazy, shifting nature of memory.

Boudica A Norfolk Story (2013)

Commissioned by Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, Boudica depicts the failed rebellion led by Queen Boudica of the ancient Iceni tribe against the Romans. Calder integrates various collage elements, including flat models made from paper collages of old Celtic and Roman coins, cut-out photos of a mosque, and museum-sourced images of statue heads. “They gave me bits of Iron Age pottery and old brooches,” Calder recalled. “I cut out and colored photos of Roman and Iceni coins for the characters.”

The film features drawn, stop-motion, and cut-out sequences. Calder crafted the Boudica character from a piece of broken pottery she found near the River Thames, painting the face with watercolors and using twisted gold wire for the arms and legs.

Roger Ballen’s Theatre of Apparitions (co-directed with Ged Haney, 2016)

Roger Ballen commissioned Calder and Ged Haney to animate and direct a project based on a series of photographic drawings created with Marguerite Rossouw. The result is a brilliantly surreal and unforgettable visual feast.

Beware of Trains (2022)

Calder’s final work offers an unsettling exploration of a woman’s mental health, marked by anxiety, obsession, and personality disorders. During a therapy session, the woman recounts fragmented memories: a dying father, a chance encounter with a stranger on a train, concerns about her daughter, and a murder she believes she dreamed of committing. Her obsessions blur the boundaries between reality and imagination.

Calder mirrors the woman’s fractured state through a masterful blend of collage, cut-outs, objects, and live-action. This dynamic mix creates a disorienting viewing experience, drawing the audience into the woman’s confusion.

Beyond portraying individual torment, Calder’s film reflects a broader societal struggle—capturing the anxiety, uncertainty, and paranoia that define the modern human condition.

You can find more of Calder’s innovative shorts on her Pearly Oyster Productions’ YouTube Channel.

A well-known figure in the world of independent animation, writer, author & curator Chris Robinson is the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.