Faithy, hey: Celebrating Faith Hubley at The Brattle Theatre by Kate Bernstein
“My choice as a working artist is not to play to the marketplace. It’s not because I don’t know how. I’ve chosen another path. As hard as my life is, and it is hard without Johnny, I wake up every morning and I can’t wait to get to work.
- Faith Hubley, interviewed by Patrick McGilligan, in Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
Figure 1: A still from John and Faith Hubley's Windy Day (1967).
Few films capture the vibrant, unbounded imagination of childhood quite like John and Faith Hubley’s Windy Day. Released in 1967, this short animated film visualizes the spontaneous and meandering dialogue of the Hubleys’ two daughters, Emily and Georgia, as they ponder such topics as marriage, family, and death. While play-acting in the backyard, the girls’ creativity transforms the outdoor world into a fantastical realm of dragons, princesses, knights, and wild animals, throughout which the two siblings seek to recover stolen treasures. These fairytale adventures are seamlessly interwoven with their musings on human creation, aging, and parenthood, lending a sense of childlike wonder to even the weightiest aspects of adult life.
Take, for instance, Emily and Georgia’s contemplation of maternity:
EMILY. The doctor puts you in a little pink blanket, then he gives you to mommy.
GEORGIA. When the doctor took you out of your stomach, um, put you in a blanket, and then your mother took you home and got married and everything, and then she fed you food, and then when you had children, you grew up and then after that you’re an old lady.
…
I wholeheartedly recommend Windy Day to everyone—whether you’re an artist or animator yourself, a sister, a mother, or a daughter. Although it premiered more than fifty years ago, the film continues to reflect what Faith Hubley once described as “the directness and the passion of a child’s vision.” It also holds a special place in my heart as the film that introduced me to the rich array of animated work produced by the Hubley family.
That being said, Windy Day represents just one piece of the creative legacy left behind by Faith Hubley, who would have celebrated her hundredth birthday this September. Following her husband’s death in 1977, Faith continued directing and completed twenty-four animated films before her own passing in 2001. Her independent films echo the same unadulterated curiosity about life’s fundamental questions that Windy Day so beautifully captures, often focusing on themes of human progress and the environment.
To honor Faith’s centenary, museums and cultural organizations across the northeastern United States have hosted commemorative programs (check out, for example, the ongoing retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art). On September 18 and 19, The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge celebrated Faith’s life, family, and work by screening seventeen Hubley films, eight of which Faith herself directed. Emily Hubley, the elder sibling featured in Windy Day and an accomplished filmmaker in her own right, led Q&A sessions each night.
The first night of programming centered on Faith’s independent films from 1977 to 2001. During the Q&A session, Emily Hubley highlighted how several of the films’ images reflect her mother’s fascination with art history. Witch Madness, for instance, opens with abstract representations of ancient goddesses such as Eurynome, Neith, Asherah, and Epona, alongside various statuary from cultures around the world. As the film transitions to a retelling of the medieval witch hunts, Faith incorporates vegetal patterns in borders that are seemingly inspired by the illuminated manuscripts of the period. In several of her other films, including Tall Time Tales and Northern Ice Golden Sun, the animator draws heavily from indigenous art, weaving visual narratives that reference the traditions and stories of Aboriginal Australian cultures in the former and Inuit communities in the latter. By integrating various artistic traditions, Faith’s films encourage viewers to reflect on the representation of cultural difference in art, as well as the shared stories that unite us across time and space.
In Emily’s words, her parent’s interest in the visual arts helped to bring “animation into an artform beyond cartoons.” Faith’s departure from traditional animation techniques and her commitment to independent filmmaking have undoubtedly had a lasting impact on the medium, and I hope to see more theatres engaging with her family’s work in the future.
References
Buhle, Paul, and Patrick McGilligan. “Faith Hubley (and John Hubley).” In Tender Comrades, 279-304. United States: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.