Having wrapped a stellar festival run (including a Jury Award at SXSW and being shortlisted for an Oscar), artist/animator Elizabeth Hobbs has released her eight-minute hand-made surrealist fantasy The Debutante into the wild.

Hobbs draws on her background in printmaking to assemble a turbulent and wonderfully chaotic frame-by-frame mix of ink, paint, rotoscoping, collage, and cut-out animation on a range of surfaces captured under a rostrum camera to interpret the tale of a young woman who convinces a hyena to take her place at a debutante ball.
 

“The film is my tribute to an extraordinary artist, who’s courage, feminism and connection to the natural world are an inspiration to us even now.”

 
Elizabeth Hobbs: “The Debutante is based on a short story written by the British artist Leonora Carrington, who was presented at the court of King George V and herself became a debutante in 1936. The film is my tribute to an extraordinary artist, who’s courage, feminism and connection to the natural world are an inspiration to us even now.

“The animated films I make are narrative but experimental, I use many unusual materials to create the work, and the characters and visual spaces in the film are sometimes depicted quite minimally, so the sound design has to work a little harder to support the narrative and complement the materials. The team at Fonic always meet this challenge and it’s always such a pleasure to work with them finding ways to tell unusual stories together.”
 
 

 
Production: Animate Projects
Director: Elizabeth Hobbs
Producer: Abigail Addison
Executive producer: Lizzie Francke, Gary Thomas
Editor: Mark Jenkins

Music/audio post: Fonic
Composer: Hutch Demouilpied
Foley artist: Sue Harding
Foley recordist/sound designer/voice recordist: Rory Hunter
Dubbing mixer: Christopher Swaine

Cast
The Debutante older/Mother: Joanna David
Hyena: Alexa Davies
The debutante younger: Naomi Stafford

Support: BFI, National Lottery
Thanks: Estate of Leonora Carrington