Directors Profile: Jane Hubbard

Jane Hubbard is an award winning film-maker who works in both animation and documentary. Her films have been broadcast and she has won several major awards including a BAFTA Cymru 2003 for her film The Unswept Floor.

Jane studied Fine Art in Cardiff and she began to develop animation techniques on a Chapter course run by Joanna Quinn. Her drawn(2D) animation short Ozone Alert (1992), part-funded by S4C, was a semi-humorous look at the earth’s atmosphere problems. “I wanted to publicise worries over the ozone layer yet embrace the subject in a lighthearted way, showing everything through the eyes of planet Earth.”

She is particularly keen on film projects involving research into history and those dealing with social issues. Her Indian trip, with fellow filmmaker Katja Stiller, involved living with the Dalit people of India, formally known as the Untouchables. The resulting Dalit Voice, gained an Asian Academy Best TV Documentary award.

Documentary ability was also evident in a nineties Channel 4 film The King of the Rajah's. It focused on a Muslim owner of a lively Cardiff club – a counter-culture haven for artists and musicians. The animator’s model animation film Sparky’s Car Boot Sale (1996), featured comic diversions from the film’s title character, a feisty Jack Russell.

The animator soon revealed her talent for teamwork and teaching at Cinetig - and her skills in building up rich historical narratives for shorts with schoolchildren and communities. Cardiff’s European Capital City of Culture bid film Just A Cool Place (2002) was vibrant and disarmingly affirmative and won widespread critical plaudits as well as a first prize in the Chicago's children's film festival.  Hubbard’s imaginative The Unswept Floor (2003) gained a BAFTA Cymru award. This striking animation collaboration with ceramics artist Maureen O’Kane offered an unusual insight into British history, metaphorically stripping away layers of tiles, earth and artefacts representing earlier ages and peoples.

Hubbard’s latest Cinetig film, Merthyr War Memorial - Behind the Stone is a half hour documentary for BBC Wales. The film, which was originally a Cinetig community project funded by the Heritage Lottery,  focus's in on a vandalised Merthyr War Memorial to suggest its enduring value.