Women’s History Month: Rhiannon Evans

Biography

Rhiannon Evans is an award winning film-maker from South Wales. She specialises in heart-felt characters and hand made techniques to tell allegorical stories that entertain and uplift audiences.

She has worked as an animation director at PartizanLab, a stop motion animator in TV series productions and commercials as well as creating her own short films. She was chosen as a recipient of the prestigious BAFTA scholarship to attend the National Film and Television School, where she was mentored by Peter Lord.

When was the first time you realised you wanted to make films?

I got in to animation relatively late. I went to Walt Disney World, saw animators working there, realised it was an actual job and wanted to do it but I was discouraged in school from pursuing it and told my drawing ability wasn’t good enough. I tried some other things but in the end I decided I wanted to be an art teacher and to get there I would study an animation degree so at least I could learn how to do it. It took me years to get the courage to apply for the course because I thought I would be rejected. 

I knew I wanted to pursue a career as a stop motion animator when I saw ‘Flatworld’ by Daniel Greaves and ‘Film Noir’ by Osbert Parker. I loved the tactile nature of the work and it showed me something completely different to the traditional clay and puppet animation I’d seen on TV. I saw how visually striking stop motion could be and how the medium you choose to work in can enhance the story.

What was the last project you worked on / made?

When I made my graduation film, ‘Heartstrings’, I found that audiences connected well with it. It had a surprisingly successful festival run for something so simple and I had positive feedback from those who had seen it. When it was nominated for a British Animation Award it gave me a lot of confidence as a filmmaker and I realised that I had more things to say and stories to tell. 

What are you up to now? What is the next project you’re working on?

I have just completed a short video for the SYFY channel which will be aired in the US. It’s a paper craft animation about my hatred of boob armour. They commissioned some female filmmakers to create a short to honour women’s history month, and were open to any kind of story…but with a genre twist so I took the opportunity to voice my opinions on how female armour is often designed in genre fiction. It’s only purpose is to objectify the woman wearing it and makes me feel unwelcome as a viewer. I know that character would not dress herself that way if she’s trying to protect herself so I’m instantly thrown out of the story and see it as a barrier to anyone smart enough to see through the motivation. It’s a 30 second video… and I’m hoping that it will give some other SYFY viewers a little bit of catharsis when they see it because even though it’s funny and charming it’s confronting a serious example of normalised sexism.

Check out the many other female filmmakers telling unique stories in Wales here.

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