Their universe, inside-out: life in pictures

Faith Hubley and her daughter Emily are animators.
It makes just as much sense, though, to call them
animists: they imbue their work with consciousness and soul, and create a universe that sways, pulsates, and undulates with joyous life. In films like Faith's autobiographical epic "My Universe Inside-Out," Miro-esque creatures--sometimes scurrying goblins, sometimes graceful jellyfish--wave long tentacles and grin toothy grins. When provoked, they develop dozens of little heads that pop off and roll away, stomp booted feet, or explode like firecrackers, shooting jagged sparks that diffuse into pale painted backgrounds.

Both Faith and Emily hand-draw most of their films, and their work exudes organic charm and idiosyncratic personality. Yalies get to sample those personalities--both Hubleys smile widely and often--on a regular basis, since Faith is a veteran storyboard design instructor at the School of Art and Emily began teaching production this year. Judging from the enthusiastic reception the pair received this Tuesday, when they shared highlights from their careers with a wide-eyed audience at Hastings Hall, their ebullience does not go unappreciated.

Faith radiates joy. But she's a survivor: of terminal cancer, of her husband's premature death, of a tempestuous childhood. She grew up poor and rebellious in New York's Hell's Kitchen, and struggled with parents who, one Thanksgiving, burned down the family home in an attempt to collect insurance--and then realized they'd forgotten to pay the premiums. She escaped them and their threats of reform school by marrying her first date. When he became abusive, she fled, still a teenager, to Los Angeles. She blossomed in Hollywood, where she roamed studio lots and taught herself to edit film. A gifted pianist, she scored Westerns, and briefly worked as an assistant to animator John Hubley. She also "saved up nickels and dimes" to finance a year to Europe. Upon her return to New York, she became a script supervisor for such films as Sidney Lumet's Twelve Angry Men, and got reacquainted with Hubley. The two fell in love, married, and set up Hubley Studios together in 1955.

Over the next few decades, the couple revolutionized animation and won three Academy Awards. They also raised four children, including indie-rock legend Georgia Hubley, who drums in Yo La Tengo. The Hubley kids figure prominently in their movies, and Faith wouldn't have had it any other way. "I didn't accept the idea that if you worked, you couldn't have a family. We always had the studio near home, and it was open to all the children. So we made films about them, and when they got older, they started making films themselves," she said.

Emily took the family business most seriously. She made her first film, Delivery Man, a meditation on her father's death and her mother's cancer, the year after her graduation from Hampshire College. It opened to widespread acclaim, which became overwhelming. "People went up to me after showings, and wanted to talk about their dead relatives, and ask me about myself," she said. "At the time autobiographical film was hip...but I wanted to move away from it. For a while I avoided narrative and tried to power my films through images alone. Now I'm working on text that crosses with pictures, with words, but also strong visuals." "Secret Religion," a ten-minute sequence slotted to open her upcoming feature "One Self: Fish-Girl" testifies to that approach. It mixes a wry voice-over with inventive drawings that add to (and, occasionally, subvert) a narrative about childhood superstition-cum-religion.

Emily's work comes across as younger, hipper, and more verbal than her mother's. While Faith is a film stickler, Emily's shorts have been aired on cable channels like Lifetime and Nickelodeon. Emily is still very much her mother's daughter, however; she works at home with her children nearby. "It's much better and much healthier for kids to see what their parents actually physically do, rather than have work be this abstract thing that takes them away from you, and is miserable, and makes them complain," she says.

Faith and Emily share iconoclastic politics and an eco-feminist sensibility. For Faith, art can be a way to restore balance to a society that mistreats women and the earth: "I think that our vision has been so male-dominated, that the more women's eyes are used, the better--we're out of balance now. I see the earth as symbiotic, and I don't really believe in the male-female split, at least the way that it's been articulated in the twentieth century. I mean, I love people, and some of us are women and some of us are men, and then there are children, and then there are animals, and then there are rocks, and who knows what else is out there." Emily brings this vision to life in her five-minute "Grandmother's Gift." Faith narrates a coming-of-age myth to a girl on the cusp of womanhood, as gentle water-colored forms sway and dance in lively celebration.

Faith traced a characteristically elliptical trajectory to Yale. "I came to Yale because my late husband John, who was considered to be a famous person, was invited to lecture at Yale, and I used to come pick him up and visit with the then-Dean, Howard Weaver," she explained. "I didn't agree with the way that things were being done at the time, because it seemed to me that students were all passive and listening and John was showing films and quacking away. I used to tell Howard that they should be active, learning by doing."

"We finally dreamed up a project that we could do at Yale. That was a quarter-century ago, so women were just beginning to be admitted--they couldn't very well keep me out, because I would tell everyone and it'd be a scandal. So we made a film about our daughters. The next year I became a terminal cancer patient, and so I felt that I had no time and I could do whatever I pleased. I decided to make a film about the history of women from a global perspective, and I said I wanted to teach a class and have the students make films. After two more years of that, Johnny died, and I assumed that they didn't want me anymore, because it was always clear that he was the star and I was the woman. It turned out that there was a real misunderstanding and they wanted me to teach. So I came back to Yale."

With Emily also on the School of Art faculty, the Hubley "cottage industry," as Faith describes it, seems to be thriving. But both mother and daughter insist that their success be on their own terms. Questioned about her affiliation with the shamanistic "Visionary" movement, for example, Faith offers a terse, and utterly characteristic, rejoinder. "I've successfully avoided labels, terms in art for my whole entire life. I think what those who use the word mean to say is that I look to the future and don't play by the rules. Which is undoubtably true."

Graphics courtesy Faith and Emily Hubley. Back to A & E...