With the debut of its fifth and final season in May 2020, Dreamworks Animation’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020) made history as another children’s animated series with explicit queer representation. Led by queer creator Noelle Stevenson and a…
It has been several weeks since I finished watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020). As with so many things in 2020, it feels a lot longer, and in that time I have reflected on how much there is…
In interviews she gave for the launch of the Netflix/DreamWorks series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018—2020), showrunner Noelle Stevenson made the point repeatedly: the new She-Ra would be the same, but different. From the beginning, the show was…
In 2020, the fifth and final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020) was released on Netflix. Headed by showrunner and Eisner award-winner Noelle Stevenson, She-Ra has received wide praise amongst fans and critics for its riveting storylines…
In addition to many other elements, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020) differentiates itself from its source material with a more racially diverse cast of characters. To discuss how and by what means these identities were constructed, we should…
In his introduction to Eco-Trauma Cinema, Anil Narine states that “nature, whether it threatens us, we threaten it or we see ourselves as part of it, remains sublime” and resistant to any meaning we try to make out of it…
“Critical utopias are not blueprints for ideal societies, but expressions of aspiration for human fulfillment towards which our political practices should always be directed.” — Ashlie Lancaster, Instantiating Critical Utopia Introduction. This post considers the cultural work taken up in…
In 2015 and again in 2017 we brought a small class of undergraduate animation students from the University of Technology Sydney on camping expeditions into the Sydney hinterland to seek out evidence and inspiration for animation in abandoned settlements of…
Recently I produced and directed a documentary about women working in the animation industry which highlighted the lack of women in key creative roles. The documentary, entitled British Animation Women Breaking the Mold, was broadcast on Sky Showcase Channel 192…
Paul Sharits (1943-1993) was an American film artist, a proponent of what Peter Gidal, P. Adams Sitney, and Anette Michelson referred to as “structural film” (Sitney 2002, 348). This 1960s avant-garde film movement foregrounded a film structure ahead of its…
