This film is part of Free

Marking Time

An uptempo look at man’s passionate obsession with time from first light to the dawn of the digital age.

Animation & Artists Moving Image 1978 3 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for North East Film Archive

Overview

Inspired by a jazzed-up Mozart track by Waldo de los Rios, South Shields animator Sheila Graber takes a playful look at the history of timekeeping, from the dawn of time to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which paved the way for the digital age on earth.

Marking Time is an impressive example of women’s contribution to the history of animation by the (then) amateur movie maker Sheila Graber, making work for fun in the 1970s whilst teaching art full time. Over the years Graber moved from pastel to pixels and the world of computer animation, from amateur experimentation after work, (in her own words “a bit like Tony Hancock in The Rebel”), to professional commissions and an international reputation. She was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Royal Television Society in 2004.