Assembly Speaker - 2 October
Bunny Schendler, Bafta-nominated Animation director and film-maker
On Monday 2 October the Sixth form students were fortunate enough to hear a talk from Bafta-nominated Animation director and filmmaker Bunny Schendler, who has made many successful animations and is also a visiting lecturer at Royal College of Art, where she completed her master’s degree in animation.
Bunny told us about the courses she completed, including a foundation year, which she expressed helped her find her love for animation, as well as a degree in fine art, at Liverpool and Wimbledon, where she was able to work with life models, including one that had sat for John Lennon when he was a student there!! Schendler said the fine art degree challenged her, but encouraged her to practise various mediums of art she hadn’t previously considered, including sculpture and printmaking.
She explained that deciding about and developing a career as a Fine Art postgraduate was a bit of a limbo phase for her; she did not want to become an artist herself but she had yet to find her niche career wise. However, she made a point of saying that Fine Art taught her to question things, and she does believe any art education teaches one to think creatively and help you navigate life challenges better.
She did lots of printmaking on these courses, as she loved the process of making prints more than painting or drawing. This inspired her to join a Printmaking workshop where she worked making prints, and on this job, she discovered Animation for the first time, which led her to discover the world of animation, which she developed a great interest in. From this point onwards, she started making her own animations, the first of which she made with her own drawings and super8 film.
Fast forward to a progressively evolving career which led to Schendler working at MOMI (Museum of the Moving Image), as an animator in residence under Waterloo bridge, she was nominated for a Bafta, for her short animation, “The world of interiors”, for Channel 4. In 2016, Schendler worked with an award-winning novelist Sheena Joughin, to make an animated documentary called “Men talk about mother” for Film London, which premiered at the BFI, at the London Film festival.
Bunny’s most recent project is a music promotion for the music band Piroshka, as well as working on a live action documentary with young people in north London on the topic of Knife crime.
Bunny’s talk about her successful journey in such a multi-creative field was both very interesting and inspiring.
