Awards

Marjut’s work has won more than thirty awards since 1972, for short films and commercials alike: among them the Grand Prix at Tampere, special jury prizes at Hiroshima and San Francisco, and the prize for best animated commercial at Zagreb for her very first commercial. Her films have been shown in eighteen retrospectives in thirteen countries, from Hamburg to Seoul. She has sat on twenty-four juries and two selection panels, and more than ninety screenings and broadcasts are on record.

Awards for short films

Learned by Heart

🥇 Best Animation, 2007 Tampere International Short Film Festival
🥉 Special Mention, 2007 Aurora festival

Many Happy Returns

Winner, 1999 Phoenix Film Festival, London
Finalist, Public Choice, 1998 British Animation Awards
🥇 Directors’ Choice Award for Most Innovative Animation Work, 1998 Images Festival, Toronto
Cartoon d’Or nominee, 1998 Anima, Brussels, one of four nominees
🏆 Grand Prix, 1997 Tampere International Short Film Festival
🥈 Second Prize, Best Computer Assisted Animation by Independent, 1997 Los Angeles World Animation Celebration
🏅 Jury Special Prize, 1997 Krakow International Short Film Festival
🥇 The Grand Animation Prize, 1997 Vila do Conde Short Film Festival
🥇 First Prize, 1997 Fantoche International Animation Festival
🥉 Honorary Distinction for Best Animation, 1997 Drama International Short Film Festival
Diploma, 1997 KROK International Festival of Animated Films, films of 5 to 10 minutes

Urpo and Turpo

Monitoro Award, 1998
🥉 Bronze Elephant, 1997 Golden Elephant International Children’s Film Festival, Hyderabad
🏅 Valtion laatutuki, 1996, Finnish State Quality Grant

Absolut Marjut Rimminen

🥇 Best Animation Produced for the Internet, 1997 Los Angeles World Animation Celebration
Cool Design Award finalist, 1997 Cool Site of the Year
🥉 Honourable Mention, 1997 Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual
🥇 Joop Geesink Prize for Best Campaign, 1996 Holland Animation Film Festival, Utrecht

The Stain

🏅 Special Jury Prize, 1992 Hiroshima International Animation Festival
🏅 Special Jury Prize, 1992 San Francisco International Film Festival

The Frog King

🥇 Winner, 1989 Magic Mirror animated fairytale competition (Kellogg’s)

Some Protection

Finalist, Best Film, 1988 British Animation Awards
Finalist, Best Sound Track, 1988 British Animation Awards

I’m not a Feminist, but…

Gold Hugo nomination, Best Short Film, 1987 at the Chicago International Film Festival
🏅 Special Jury Prize, 1986 Cinanima International Animation Festival, Portugal

The Bridge

🏅 Valtion laatutuki, 1983, Finnish State Quality Grant

Trip to Eternity

🥉 Honourable Mention, 1973 Lübeck Film Festival

Awards for commercials

Nokian NRV, Kastemato

🥇 Best Seconds of the Month, 1999
🥇 First prize for automotive and car accessories TV advertisements, 1999, Epica Awards
Voitto-palkinto for the TV film Mato, 1999, competition organised by Satu ry, the Finnish Advertisers’ Association and SML

Cinenova

🥇 Winner, 1997 Cinenova ident competition

Fazer, synttäreiden odotus

Best commercial of the year, 1991

UPO Tehokarhu

Honourable Mention, 1986, Vuoden Huiput

White Cap

🥇 Kultainen Klaffi, 1984, Finland’s gold award for advertising film
Finalist, 1984, New York Film and TV Festival
🏅 Personal Achievement, 1983, Finnish Advertising Film Competition

Mehukatti

🥈 Hopeaklaffi, 1984, Finland’s silver award for advertising film

Enstex

🥈 Hopeaklaffi, 1980, Finland’s silver award for advertising film

Valintatalo, Hyvä tyttö

🥉 Honourable Mention, 1975, Klaffi-kilpailu, Finland’s annual best-commercials competition

Wolz, Ilme meikki

🥉 Kunniakirja, 1973, special mention for animation, Klaffi-kilpailu, Finland’s annual best-commercials competition

Vivante

🥇 Best Animated Commercial, 1972 Zagreb World Animation Festival
🥈 Hopeaklaffi, 1972, Finland’s silver award for advertising film

Marjut Rimminen receives her prize on stage at Zagreb in 1972 from a man in a dark suit; the festival mark and ZAGREB 72 printed below. — Receiving the prize, Zagreb 1972

Retrospectives

Animated Encounters Festival September 2012, retrospective, Bristol
Etiuda & Anima November 2012, retrospective, Krakow
Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival July 2010, retrospective, 14th festival
Tricky Women 2008, personale at Topkino, Vienna: Vivante, Absolut Marjut Rimminen, Unicef AIDS Red Ribbon, Some Protection, The Stain, Many Happy Returns and Learned by Heart
Hiroshima International Animation Festival 2008, retrospective
Secret Cinema 13 March 2007, Curzon Soho, London: the premiere of Learned by Heart, with Many Happy Returns and Some Protection, followed by a conversation with Gareth Evans; organised by animate! and the Finnish Institute
Tehran International Animation Festival March 2005, retrospective
Animatricks 1 to 3 November 2002, retrospective of the short films, Helsinki
ETIUDA International Film Festival 2001, retrospective, Krakow
Holland Animation Film Festival 15 to 19 November 2000, retrospective From Black and White to All Shades of Pink, Utrecht
Animerte Dager 1999, retrospective, Norway
European Cinema and Television Festival 1 to 5 December 1999, retrospective screening, Viareggio, Italy
Tampere Film Festival 1998, retrospective
Internationales Trickfilm-Festival Stuttgart 3 to 8 April 1998, retrospective at the 9th festival, alongside retrospectives of Marv Newland, Magnus Carlsson and Jiří Brdečka
Anima, Brussels Cartoon and Animated Film Festival 17 to 28 February 1998, retrospective homage at the 17th festival, presented by Marjut from the Tetra Pak commercials through The Frog King and Urpo ja Turpo to The Stain and Many Happy Returns
Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg 1996, masterclass and retrospective
Fantoche 1995, retrospective at the first International Animation Festival, Baden, Switzerland
Metropolis Cinema 1995, retrospective, Hamburg

Juries

Etiuda & Anima 23 to 29 November 2012, Anima competition jury with Borivoj Dovniković Bordo (chair), Alfio Bastiancich, Janusz Korosadowicz and Marta Pajek, Krakow
Short Encounters 2012, animation jury, Bristol, UK
Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival 2010, jury for commissioned films, 14th festival
Hiroshima International Animation Festival 2008, international jury
British Animation Awards 2008, jury for animation craft, London, UK
Hinku ja Vinku 2008, jury, Finland
Hinku ja Vinku 2007, jury, Finland
Dick Arnall Award, Aurora Festival 2007, jury, Norwich, UK
Tehran International Animation Festival 2005, international jury, 4th festival, 6 to 10 March
Krakow International Short Film Festival 2004, international jury
Turku Arts Academy 2001, external assessor of animation graduates, Turku, Finland
Holland Animation Film Festival 2000, international jury, Utrecht
Animerte Dager 2000, international jury, Fredrikstad, Norway
European Cinema and Television Festival 1999, international jury, Viareggio, Italy
Stuttgart International Animation Festival 1998, jury for children’s films, Stuttgart, Germany
Tampere International Short Film Festival 1998, international jury, Tampere, Finland
Animafest Zagreb 1996, World Festival of Animated Films, jury
Fantoche International Animation Festival 1995, international jury, Baden, Switzerland
Vuoden Huiput 1993, jury, Finland
Edinburgh Film Festival 1993, McLaren Award jury, Edinburgh, Scotland
Channel 4 and MOMI Animators 1993, selection panel for professional residencies, London, UK
Finnish Film Foundation, Raja animation project 1992, selection panel, Finland
Vuoden Huiput 1992, jury for radio, film and video commercials, Finland
Royal College of Art 1990, external assessor of animation graduates, London, UK
BAFTA 1989, animation awards jury, London, UK
British Animation Awards 1988, student film awards jury, Cardiff, UK
BAFTA 1985, animation awards jury, London, UK
Klaffi competition 1973, jury for Finnish commercials, Helsinki, Finland

Screenings and broadcasts

Screenings, premieres, broadcasts and appearances, newest first.

Mixed Feelings, at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2026
I’m not a Feminist, but…, in Magic in Marimekko: Dick Arnall, animate! and the manipulated moving image, a tribute at the London International Animation Festival 2024, Close-Up Cinema, London, and online, 24 November 2024
Close-Up Film Centre 11 December 2022, London: four of her films in the programme Finnish/Female/Feminist Filmmakers, among them The Bridge, The Stain and Many Happy Returns, with a Q&A with Marjut; curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, introduced by Milja Mikkola, with the Finnish Institute
The Stain, in Serious Animation: The Films of Orly Yadin, Shelburne Museum, Vermont, 1 March 2020, with Some Protection
Some Protection, in Serious Animation: The Films of Orly Yadin, Shelburne Museum, Vermont, 1 March 2020, with The Stain
Urpo and Turpo, a remastered compilation of the series released in cinemas in Finland and Sweden in 2018, in Finland on 12 October, as Urpo ja Turpo johtolangan jäljillä
Some Protection, in 100 vuotta suomalaista animaatiota, the Animatricks online gallery, February to May 2014
Urpo and Turpo, on Yle Teema, Animaatioarkiston aarteita, 7, 10 and 12 October 2014: Urpo ja Turpo näyttelevät in a package marking a hundred years of Finnish animation
Learned by Heart, at the documentary film event Toden näköistä, Kiasma, Helsinki, together with Some Protection, 2013
Some Protection, in the documentary film event Toden näköistä at Kiasma, Helsinki, 2013, with Learned by Heart
Many Happy Returns, in a 10-year anniversary programme at Fantoche, Switzerland, 2012
Many Happy Returns, in British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor, a special edition of Animated Worlds presented by Clare Kitson, 18 April 2010
The Stain, shown as the short before Queen Margot in the Film Season at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 February 2010
Learned by Heart, broadcast on YLE1 on 22 December 2010
Some Protection, in A Caring Eye: The Documentary Way, introduced by Clare Kitson at the Bradford Animation Festival, 9 to 13 November 2010
Mixed Feelings, in A Caring Eye: The Documentary Way, introduced by Clare Kitson at the Bradford Animation Festival, 9 to 13 November 2010
Many Happy Returns, in the Tony Fish Lifetime Achievement Award retrospective at the Bradford Animation Festival, 2009
The Stain, in the Tony Fish Lifetime Achievement Award retrospective at the Bradford Animation Festival, 2009
Learned by Heart, at Animateka, Kinodvor, Ljubljana, 7 to 13 December 2009, in the Finnish focus programme
Learned by Heart, in the AnimaDoc programme at DocPoint, the Helsinki documentary film festival, with a presentation by Marjut, together with Some Protection, 2009
Learned by Heart, in the Tony Fish Lifetime Achievement Award retrospective at the Bradford Animation Festival, 2009
Some Protection, in the AnimaDoc programme at DocPoint, the Helsinki documentary film festival, 2009, in a presentation by Marjut with Learned by Heart
Some Protection, in the Tony Fish Lifetime Achievement Award retrospective at the Bradford Animation Festival, 2009
Urpo and Turpo, in the Tony Fish Lifetime Achievement Award retrospective at the Bradford Animation Festival, 2009
I’m not a Feminist, but…, in the Focus on Finland programme at the Animateka festival, Ljubljana, 2009, with Learned by Heart
The Stain, in the Joanna Quinn selection at Animafest Zagreb, 2008
Learned by Heart, at the International Animation Festival of Hiroshima, 10 August 2008
Vivante, in Animated ads at the Tampere Film Festival, 2008
The Stain, in the Interior Worlds panel at the Aurora Festival, Norwich, 2007
Learned by Heart, at the Animatricks festival, Helsinki, 2007
Learned by Heart, broadcast on YLE1 on 6 December 2007, Finland’s independence day
Learned by Heart, in Marjut’s making-of presentation at IDFA, Amsterdam, 2007
Learned by Heart, premiere at Secret Cinema, Curzon Soho, London, March 2007
Some Protection, in Marjut’s making-of presentation at IDFA, Amsterdam, 2007
IDFA November 2007, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam: Learned by Heart
The Stain, in Sexuality and Desire, a programme curated by Jayne Pilling for the Animex International Festival of Animation, Middlesbrough, 2005
Some Protection, in a programme of world animated documentary films presented by Marjut at the Finnish/Scottish film seminar No Comments, Edinburgh, 2005
Urpo and Turpo, at the Blue Sea Film Festival, Rauma: Urpo ja Turpo kuntoilevat in the children’s programme
Many Happy Returns, in Moving Portraits of the Self and Other at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 14 November 2004
The Stain, in a programme of animated films made by women at the AniMadrid Festival, 2004, with Some Protection
Some Protection, in a programme of animated films made by women at the AniMadrid Festival, 2004, with The Stain
Animatricks 2004, Helsinki: a programme of her commercials, Animoidut mainoselokuvat, uusia kasvoja 1970-luvulla
Mumbai 2004, a special programme of films by women animators
Urpo and Turpo, in Marjut Rimmisen pehmeä paketti lapsille, the children’s programme at Animatricks, Helsinki, 2002
Urpo and Turpo, broadcast on YLE TV2, 5 January to 9 February 2002
The Frog King, in Marjut Rimmisen pehmeä paketti lapsille, the children’s programme at Animatricks, Helsinki, 2002
Animatricks, Helsinki 2002, Marjut Rimmisen mainoselokuvia, a compilation of her commercials
Many Happy Returns, in Klassigerinnen, a programme curated by Jayne Pilling at the first Tricky Women festival, Vienna, with The Stain, 2001
The Stain, in the British Animation Retrospective at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, 2001
The Stain, in Klassigerinnen, a programme curated by Jayne Pilling at the first Tricky Women festival, Vienna, 2001, with Many Happy Returns
Janela da Alma 2001, a Brazilian feature documentary on seeing by João Jardim and Walter Carvalho, with nineteen interviewees including José Saramago, Wim Wenders, Agnès Varda and Oliver Sacks; Marjut talks about her squint and Many Happy Returns
The Stain, at the Festival de Cine de Alcalá de Henares, Spain, 2000
Urpo and Turpo, broadcast on YLE TV1, 28 October to 30 December 2000
Many Happy Returns, in Things to Come, a programme of experimental films curated by Edwin Carels, Cinema de Balie, Amsterdam, 1999
Some Protection, in a programme of British documentaries at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1999
Mixed Feelings, in the Digital New Wave programme at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999
Many Happy Returns, as a Public Choice finalist at the British Animation Awards screening, National Film Theatre, London, February 1998
Urpo and Turpo, broadcast on YLE TV1, 30 June to 16 July 1998
Mixed Feelings, at Filmfest Dresden, 1998
Mixed Feelings, at Feminale Köln, Cologne, 1998
Many Happy Returns, screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival
Many Happy Returns, in International Award Winners at the Festival of Festivals, Arhus, Denmark, 1997
Many Happy Returns, in Bursting Bubbles: The Best of British Shorts at the Vancouver International Film Festival, 1997
Many Happy Returns, in the Program of International Short Works at the Pusan International Film Festival, 1997
Many Happy Returns, in Europa Panorama at the Festival on Wheels, Ankara, Turkey, 1997
Many Happy Returns, a talk and presentation of the film at the Images Workshop, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK, 1997
Many Happy Returns, on Channel 4 in 1997, with an interview with Marjut in the late-night animation magazine Dope Sheet
Many Happy Returns, in Animated Women at the Birmingham International Film & Television Festival, 19 to 30 November 1997
Mixed Feelings, transmitted on Channel 4 in 1997 as a series of four documentaries
Dope Sheet 1997–1999, Channel 4’s late-night animation magazine: with Marjut in one of its fifteen episodes
Gezici Festival 1997, the Festival on Wheels of the Ankara Cinema Association, screened her work
Cartoon Sushi 1997 or 1998, MTV and Teletoon: an episode with her work among films by Bill Plympton, Raimund Krumme and Juan Pablo Zaramella
The Stain, in the retrospective of 100 years of British animation at the Zagreb International Animation Festival, 1996
Some Protection, in the lecture Animation and the documentary form by Dr Paul Wells, National Film Theatre, London, November 1996
Urpo and Turpo, cinema premiere of the compilation of episodes 1 to 6 at Kino Engel 2, Helsinki, 27 April 1996, distributed by Cinema Mondo; festival screenings the same year at Espoo Ciné, Copenhagen, Lübeck, Sodankylä and Oulu (Elonet)
Urpo and Turpo, first run on YLE TV1, 14 September to 19 October 1996
Urpo and Turpo, a making-of exhibition during Children’s Cultural Week, Helsinki, 1996
Urpo and Turpo, broadcast on YLE TV1, 16 to 21 December 1996
Urpo and Turpo, broadcast on YLE TV1, 25 December 1996 to 1 January 1997
The Stain, in the programme British Women Animate at the Tampere International Short Film Festival, 1995, with Some Protection and I’m not a Feminist, but…, where Marjut gave an interview to YLE
The Stain, presented in Making of The Stain at Fantoche International Animation Festival, Baden, Switzerland, 1995
Some Protection, in the programme British Women Animate at the Tampere International Short Film Festival, 1995, with The Stain and I’m not a Feminist, but…, where Marjut gave an interview to YLE
I’m not a Feminist, but…, in British Women Animate at the Tampere International Short Film Festival, 1995, with The Stain and Some Protection, where Marjut gave an interview to YLE
The Stain, in The International Tournée of Animation, Volume 6 (Expanded Entertainment), which toured cinemas, campuses and museums in the United States and was released on video
The Stain, original artwork and sets in Animation Plus, a thirteen-venue tour from Glasgow in February 1994 to London in January 1996, with Some Protection
Some Protection, in the celebration programme Ten Years of Award-winning Animation at Channel 4, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, London, 1994
Some Protection, original artwork and sets in Animation Plus, a thirteen-venue tour from Glasgow in February 1994 to London in January 1996, with The Stain
The Stain, in A Salute to British Animation at the 10th Jerusalem Film Festival, Israel, 1993
The Stain, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, 1993
The Stain, broadcast on television on 17 August 1993, with Some Protection
The Stain, in Best of Hiroshima 92, Cinémathèque québécoise, Montreal, January 1993
The Stain, in Best of Hiroshima 92, Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 1993
The Stain, in Best of Hiroshima 92, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, February 1993
The Stain, in Best of Hiroshima 92, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 1993
Some Protection, in Captured in Frame, a film festival of imprisonment organised by NACRO, Commonwealth Institute, London, 1993, with a debate
The Stain, at the Tampere Film Festival, March 1992
The Stain, in the exhibition Animation at the Cutting Edge, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1992, which showed artwork and screenings of the film and of Some Protection
The Stain, in Arrows of Desire, the second ICA Biennial showcase of British short films, London, 1992; the programme toured for two years in eleven countries
The Stain, broadcast on Channel 4, 1992
Some Protection, in the exhibition Animation at the Cutting Edge, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1992, which showed artwork and screenings of the film and of The Stain
The Bridge, original artwork from the film in the exhibition of artwork and films organised by D&AD at BAFTA, London, 1991
Kellogg, bran cereals, artwork shown, with a Valintatalo commercial, in the exhibition of artwork and films at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, London, organised by D&AD, 1991
Some Protection, broadcast on Channel 4 in February 1990 under the series title In Justice, renamed at the last minute because the BBC had a drama called Blind Justice (The Lost Continent)
Some Protection, in the Official Selection of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, 1989
Some Protection, premiered at the Animation Festival Bristol, 1987
I’m not a Feminist, but…, premiere at the Cambridge Animation Festival, November 1985
I’m not a Feminist, but…, original artwork in Film & Strip, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 1985, later touring to Southampton, Southwark, Liverpool, London, Cardiff, Barnsley and Belfast
Vielä pikkuisen piirrettyä elokuvaa 1983, a 37-minute survey of Finnish animation by Juho Gartz and Lauri Tykkyläinen, with Marjut among the animators interviewed; shown again at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, on 15 October 2014

Where to watch

Where the films can be seen or bought today.

Many Happy Returns, on the British Animation Awards compilation DVD, Volume 1
The Stain, free to stream at the Internet Archive, uploaded by producer Orly Yadin
The Stain, on the DVD Desire & Sexuality: Animating the Unconscious, Vol 1 from the British Animation Awards, the companion to Jayne Pilling’s 2012 book
The Stain, listed by Marjut on DVD from Yadin Productions
Learned by Heart, on the compilation DVD Animating Reality, presented by A Million Movies a Minute
Some Protection, free to stream at the Internet Archive, uploaded by producer Orly Yadin
Some Protection, on the Blind Justice DVD from Yadin Productions, with the other three films of the series
Some Protection, on the DVD of Tricky Women: AnimationsfilmKunst von Frauen (Schüren, Marburg, 2011)
Some Protection, distributed by Cinenova, London
Urpo and Turpo, episodes on Yle Areena; on DVD from VLMedia (2019)
I’m not a Feminist, but…, distributed by Cinenova, London

Writing about the work

I’m not a Feminist, but…, Some Protection, The Stain: “it’s rare to meet someone who’s seen The Stain who hasn’t been, quite simply, knocked out by it” Jayne Pilling (ed.), Women and Animation: A Compendium, British Film Institute, 1992, pages 37 to 40, a profile of the three films and a filmography entry.
The Stain, Some Protection: “Two of the best shorts, The Stain…” Jeanette Winterson, reviewing the year’s shorts in Sight and Sound, October 1992; the November 1992 issue has a full entry on The Stain for its BFI and Connoisseur video release, and The Times listed both films for television on 17 August 1993.
The Stain: “An examination of incest and sex abuse within the nuclear family. … The Freudian ability of animators deftly to display the motives behind the mask is one of the great strengths of the form. Animation can handle difficult delicate topics with extraordinary lightness and perception.” Jeanette Winterson, Sight and Sound, October 1992.
Some Protection, The Stain: “Arguably, this is a more truthful reality and one which is only possible to document in animation.” Paul Wells, Understanding Animation, Routledge, 1998, page 27, on Some Protection as the worked example of animated documentary; The Stain is in the chapter on the feminine aesthetic (page 199).
Some Protection, The Stain, Many Happy Returns, Mixed Feelings: “the final film, Some Protection by Marjut Rimminen, would attract the most accolades” Clare Kitson, British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor, Parliament Hill Books, 2008, on the Blind Justice series; the book also tells how The Stain came to the channel, covers Mixed Feelings and Many Happy Returns, and has a photograph of Marjut at Fantoche with its Grand Prix (page 165).
The Stain: “An imaginative animated fable about the benefits of family life: envy, incest, murder. With all the sinister simplicity of a tale by Edward Gorey, it is exactly the sort of thing that distributors should be picking up as support for their new features.” Waldo Lydecker, Time Out, 31 July 1991.
The Stain: “In The Stain, the past haunts the present in a tight economy of flashbacks and recurrent images. As in the best short films nothing is wasted and everything interlocks until the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Like a Greek tragedy, the outcome is already foretold yet the dénouement is no less shocking when it comes. The film as a whole has a visceral impact like a good production of Oedipus Rex, which was, after all, the original family drama.” Leslie Felperin Sharman, Sight and Sound, November 1992.
Some Protection: “[Marjut Rimminen] encouraged her class to work with feelings, to articulate them visually and kinetically. The impact of Some Protection … where the visuals give emotional force to the protagonist Josie O’Dwyer’s narration of the true story of her prison experiences, reveals [her] own mastery of this process.” James Leahy, Bristol: Animation and animators, Sight and Sound, Winter 1987/88, page 8, on the 1987 Bristol Animation Festival, where the Blind Justice films were shown in the programme Wayward Girls and Wicked Women.
Some Protection: “The impact of Some Protection owes much to her ability to evoke visually and kinetically the moods, emotions and feelings of the protagonist, Josie O’Dwyer, as she narrates the true story of her experiences of detention and imprisonment.” James Leahy, The Guardian, 5 November 1987.
The Stain: “The Stain, a stylistic tour-de-force, employs brightly painted, childlike images to convey the flights of fancy of a disabled adolescent; life with her abusive siblings, by contrast, is depicted through stark model animation.” B.C., reviewing The 24th International Tournée of Animation in The Motion Picture Guide 1995 Annual, CineBooks, 1995, page 370.
Vivante: “Even a sponsor less flexible than the alphabet can still produce delicate pleasures, as the prizewinner for the best commercial proved. Marjut Rimminen’s Vivante, a 30-second ode to a bubble bath, has been banned by Finnish television for its merry exposure of a girl sharing her bath with a man. Instead it now delights cinema audiences, and wins festival prizes.” Derek Hill, The Times, on Zagreb 1972.
Many Happy Returns: “A compelling work which succeeds in subverting conventional definitions of story-telling, animation and cinema.” Tampere International Short Film Festival jury, 5 March 1997.
Some Protection: “Some Protection … the story of a juvenile delinquent, is interpreted with great visual flair and energy by animator Marjut Rimminen. The graphic style is not far from that of comics and strip-cartoon, especially the True-Life Crime Story of cheap popular fiction. It’s an appropriate style for O’Dwyer’s story of institutionalised violence and despair: the extreme contrasts of light and dark of the prison interiors accord well with a moral world, where the choices are stark.” Brian Ashbee, Animation, Art and Digitality, in Maureen Thomas and François Penz (eds), Architectures of Illusion: From Motion Pictures to Navigable Interactive Environments, Intellect, 2003, pages 43 to 44.
Some Protection: “A peculiarly (though not exclusively) British genre that has flourished since the advent, in 1981, of Channel 4 television, which encouraged and commissioned a wide range of new animation projects, often focussing on strong social issues and true experiences, such as Marjut Rimminen’s Some Protection … about legal injustices to women” Orly Yadin, documentary animation, in Brian McFarlane (ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film, Methuen and the British Film Institute, 2003, page 181, the film as the first example of the genre. Yadin produced the film.
Some Protection, I’m not a Feminist, but…: “The animation is able to compress this account into a short and powerful description. The fact that the woman is not seen reinforces the concept that she, as an offender, is deliberately kept hidden from society.” Roger Noake, Animation Techniques: Planning and Producing Animation with Today’s Technologies 1988, pages 48 to 49, with four stills from Some Protection. On pages 22 to 23 he sets stills from I’m not a Feminist, but… opposite Christine Roche’s drawings to show how Marjut simplified them for animation, and names the film among the most successful comic-strip adaptations of the 1980s, with When the Wind Blows.
Some Protection: “It is widely assumed that documentary is about Griersonian grit, Flaherty fact and Wiseman wisdom, but this is to neglect the rich and varied tradition of documentary in the animated film. From Winsor McCay’s Sinking of the Lusitania, to Marjut Rimminen’s subjective documentary Some Protection, to Jan Svankmajer’s The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. Animation has documented the personal, social and political events that have shaped the world.” Dr Paul Wells, National Film Theatre lecture, November 1996.
Some Protection: “This type of film is now so relatively familiar it may be difficult to imagine how groundbreaking works such as Aardman Studio’s Animated Conversations (1978), or more formally experimental work such as [Marjut Rimminen]’s Some Protection (1987) and Tim Webb’s A is for Autism (1992), appeared at the time they were first seen.” Jayne Pilling, introduction to Animating the Unconscious, 2012, page 6.
Marjut Rimminen: “Channel 4 in the commissioning and broadcasting of new independent work have prompted the emergence of highly talented female animators … The Leeds Animation Collective, Joanna Quinn, Candy Guard, Erica Russell, Marjut Rimminen and Ruth Lingford have created a distinctly ‘feminine aesthetic’ which has challenged dominant orthodoxies not merely in British animation but in the form per se.” Paul Wells, Art of the Impossible, in Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2002.
The Stain: “Rimminen and Roche draw on animation’s capacity to exceed live-action’s depiction of the world as it is to depict the possibility that deformation might mutate into transformation through acts of imagination.” Karen Beckman, Mixing Memory and Desire, in Jayne Pilling (ed.), Animating the Unconscious: Desire, Sexuality and Animation, Wallflower Press, 2012, pages 187 to 192; the book adds interviews with Marjut and Christine Roche (193 to 198) and Roche’s sketchbooks (199 to 207), and Ruth Hayes returns to the film on page 216. Reviewed by Ben Mitchell in Skwigly.
The Stain: “The juxtaposition of different materials and techniques in The Stain puts viewers to work identifying their own responses, ‘reading’ these different realities and constructing meaning from the whole.” Ruth Hayes, The Animated Body and Its Material Nature, in Jayne Pilling (ed.), Animating the Unconscious, Wallflower Press, 2012, pages 216 to 217, where she also reads the film as “a critique of bourgeois family dynamics”.
The Stain: “What saves the film from becoming an overly simplified and binarized view of illicit familial desire in which men emerge as perpetrators and women as victims is its visual, narrative and psychological complexity through which even the darkest moments of this alternative to the home movie resist reductive moral judgements.” Karen Beckman, Mixing Memory and Desire, in Jayne Pilling (ed.), Animating the Unconscious, 2012, page 190.
Marjut Rimminen: “Marjut Rimminen is one of the most complex protagonists in the European animated film world. This is reflected in both the multitude of animation techniques and in particular the complexity of her topics. Her films often have a documentary core, but it is on the whole difficult to categorize them. After a closer inspection of the films, one notices an effective narrative technique, and rather unconventional fact, that despite the films undoubtedly are animated, they seem strangely ‘real’.” Ulrich Wegenast, Trickfilm Festival Stuttgart, April 1998.
I’m not a Feminist, but…: “Rimminen’s feminism has a playful and ironic element to it; her films show just how possible it is to combine critical cinema and entertainment.” Ulrich Wegenast, Trickfilm Festival Stuttgart retrospective, April 1998.
I’m not a Feminist, but…: “Witty and provocative I’m not a Feminist, but… shakes the foundations upon which fundamental inequalities have been built by skilfully confronting sexism at its own game.” Cinenova, the feminist film distributor, catalogue.
Learned by Heart, Some Protection: “Rimminen reconciles her childhood with the social evolution of Finland” Annabelle Honess Roe, Animated Documentary, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, page 169; Learned by Heart is a case study in the chapter Animated Memories (pages 146 to 150 and 154 to 155), and Some Protection is placed in the Blind Justice series (page 13).
Learned by Heart: “an exploration of post-Second World War Finland seen through the perception of a young girl, but also the specific form of perception in the moment as it is later remembered” Paul Wells, Never Mind the Bollackers: Here’s the Repositories, Sites and Archives in Nonfiction Animation, in Jonathan Murray and Nea Ehrlich (eds), Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pages 114 to 116, drawing on his 2007 interview with Marjut.
Learned by Heart: “x-rays the country’s history through the eyes of a child” Giannalberto Bendazzi, Animation: A World History, Volume III: Contemporary Times, CRC Press, 2016, page 135, in the chapter on Finland; the chapter on Great Britain (pages 71 to 72) follows Marjut from Vivante and Zagreb through Halas and Batchelor, The Stain, Urpo & Turpo, Many Happy Returns, Mixed Feelings and Red Ribbon to Learned by Heart.
Many Happy Returns: “It is like a kick in the kidneys.” Thomas Basgier, Fantoche: Switzerland’s Experiment, Animation World Magazine, 1997, on the first prize winner and the best of the competition; Valérie Hamon-Rivoallon wrote on the Brussels retrospective in The Most Wonderful Voyage in Folioscope (April 1998), with the same issue’s news pages on Stuttgart and the Cartoon d’Or nomination.
Many Happy Returns: “The animation resurrects the repressed and transparent child and forces the spectators to truly see her, not only with the help of their eyes.” Slava Greenberg, More Than Meets the Eye: The Haptic Spectatorship Experience of Short Avant-Garde Animation about Vision Disabilities, Frames Cinema Journal 5, 2014, reading the film as the trauma of invisibility, with Marjut on her strabismus.
The Bridge: “The Bridge by Marjut Rimminen is one of the finest Finnish animations through decades. It is a satire of war and peace, of optimism and pessimism. It explores the limitations of our reality with black humour. It is about the struggle between hope and despair, that neither of them wins, but life goes on.” Tampere Film Festival 1998 retrospective.
Learned by Heart: “Learned by Heart steps unflinchingly into the charged territory of generational relations, historical amnesia and the secret agendas of the human heart, where a shared silence yields to final forgiveness.” Secret Cinema listing, animate! and the Finnish Institute, Curzon Soho, March 2007.
Commercials: “Marjut Rimminen has been making TV commercials for over thirty years, longer than many in the industry have been alive. She is the most internationally recognised Finnish animator working in advertising.” Markkinointi & Mainonta, November 2000.
Urpo and Turpo: “Urpo and Turpo are without a doubt Finland’s funniest bears. Children, adults and critics alike fell in love first with the books and then with the autumn animated series. For animator Marjut Rimminen, the series was a new challenge.” Kirsi Riipinen, Kotiliesi, 4 October 1996.
Urpo and Turpo: “Urpo and Turpo, better than Toy Story.” Ilta-Sanomat, film review, 1996.
Yaxa, Cabaret: “Excellent animation is characteristic of the Yaxa films: so this one too. Butterflies, hippie curls, bursting scents and the numbers of the products carry on the Yaxa line consistently, which no competing brand could imitate without punishment. What do we mean by punishment? The advertising going to Yaxa’s account, of course.” TV irkistelijät, a review of television commercials.
Some Protection: “… effectively represents the sheer horror of our penal system” A review in Spare Rib, 1988.
Vivante: “In recent years such sprightly talents as Lemmikki Nenonen and Marjut Rimminen, who won a prize at Zagreb for their commercial, Vivante, … have revealed an idiosyncratic and vigorous approach to animation.” Peter Cowie, Finnish Cinema, Finnish Film Foundation and Tantivy Press, 1976, page 116, in the chapter on animation.
I’m not a Feminist, but…, The Stain: “the satirical I’m Not A Feminist, But… (1985) and the moving The Stain (1991)” Finland: A Cultural Encyclopedia, Finnish Literature Society, 1997, page 18, in the entry on animation, among the animated films made for adults.
I’m not a Feminist, but…, Vivante: “the ironic, polemic I’m not a Feminist, but…” Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation, 1994, page 322 (first in Italian, Cartoons: il cinema d’animazione, 1888–1988, 1988), which also records Vivante, made with Lemmikki Nenonen and awarded at Zagreb, and the move to Britain.
Some Protection, The Frog King, The Stain: “excellent examples” Richard Taylor, The Encyclopedia of Animation Techniques, 1996, of the techniques shown in captioned stills from the three films.
The Stain: “Marjut Rimminen and Christine Roche puzzled audiences with their mixed-technique examination of disturbed inter-family relationships, The Stain.” Variety International Film Guide 1993, 1992, page 495, in its survey of British animation.
The Stain: “Created by Marjut Rimminen and Christine Roche, The Stain tells a troubled family history from the dual perspective of identical twins. Its characters and images, although inventive, lack the psychological resonance to bring to life a fable that has an abrupt and shocking ending.” Stephen Holden, Animated Inventiveness, The New York Times, 21 January 1994, reviewing The 24th International Tournée of Animation at the Angelika Film Center, where The Stain was the longest film; reprinted in The New York Times Film Reviews, 1993–1994.
Some Protection: Paul Wells, The Beautiful Village and the True Village: A Consideration of Animation and the Documentary Aesthetic 1997, in Art & Animation (Academy Editions, pages 40 to 45, with a still from the film) and in A Reader in Animation Studies (John Libbey): the film as the example of the subjective mode of animated documentary
The Stain: Hannah Hamad, Feminist narratives 2025, in The Encyclopaedia of Animation Studies, volume 4, Bloomsbury: the film as a dark narrative of patriarchal domestic violence and family trauma told in the mode of the fairytale
Some Protection: Slava Greenberg, Drawing the Line: Archiving Feminist Animation 2020, The Moving Image 20, pages 70 to 84
Some Protection: Maureen Furniss, A New History of Animation 2016, Thames & Hudson, page 408: the film in the Blind Justice series
Marjut Rimminen: an entry in Nichola Dobson, Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons 2020, second edition, Rowman & Littlefield
The Stain: Olivier Cotte, Il était une fois le dessin animé… et le cinéma d’animation 2001: the invitation to Halas and Batchelor, the independent career in England, and the film.
Vivante: Jukka Kortti, Modernisaatiomurroksen kaupalliset merkit 2003: her first film, the Zagreb prize that opened the way abroad, and her part in starting Kirsti Paakkanen’s Womena straight after graduating.
The Stain, Learned by Heart: Meghan Annette Gilbride, Memory Migrations: Bringing the Past to Life in Contemporary Animated Film 2012, PhD thesis, University College London: both films in the corpus of animated non-fiction of personal remembrance
Learned by Heart: Bella Honess Roe, Animated Memories 2013, Animation Studies 2.0, Society for Animation Studies: the film as an animated documentary that recalls the past
I’m not a Feminist, but…, Blind Justice: Doris V. Sutherland, Women in British Animation: A Short Introduction 2016, Women Write About Comics: Rimminen and Roche as the talents behind the film and as contributors to the series.
Some Protection: Birgitt Wagner and Waltraud Grausgruber (eds), Tricky Women: AnimationsfilmKunst von Frauen 2011, Schüren, Marburg, with the film on the book’s DVD; reviewed by Sharon Katz in Animation World Network.
Profiles and shorter pieces: Raising the BAAs (British Animation Awards); Great Women Animators; the Aurora 2007 festival catalogue, with a biography and the tribute to Dick Arnall; Out of the Animation Ghetto (Animation World Network, on Clare Kitson’s commissions, naming Some Protection); The Lost Continent on Blind Justice, Film & Strip and the Animation Alliance UK, of which she was a member with Phil Mulloy, Caroline Leaf, Clare Kitson, Jonathan Hodgson and Jayne Pilling.
Mentioned in: International Film Guide (1973); Film (1992); Positif (1994); Animation Journal and Hrvatski obzor (1996); Animation Magazine and Peter Greenaway: Architecture and Allegory (1997); Noi donne (1998); Finlande: une approche culturelle (1999); Mervi Pantti, Kansallinen elokuva pelastettava (2000); the Anima Mundi catalogue (2002); The Encyclopedia of British Film (2003 and 2005); James Clarke, Animated Films (2004); Kino (2004); Paul Wells, The Fundamentals of Animation (2006) and Re-imagining Animation (2008); David Curtis, A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain (2007).
Listed in: The British Edge (1987); British National Film and Video Catalogue (1989); The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (1991); Arrows of Desire: New Directions in British Film and Video (1993); The British Cinema Source Book (1995, the BFI’s viewing copies of Some Protection and The Stain); Film, Video and Multimedia Guide (1997); The Complete Index to British Sound Film Since 1928 and the Facets Video Encyclopedia (1999); Kino plus (2002); Directory of World Cinema: Finland (2012); and the Finnish periodical index, the Art Index, the Humanities Index and the International Index to Film Periodicals.
Tuula Leinonen, Sata vuotta suomalaista animaatiota 2014, Aalto ARTS Books. Listed by Marjut as a resource.
James Hobbs, Sketch Your World 2013, Apple Press. Listed by Marjut as a resource.
Clare Kitson, Art and Animation 1999, Channel Four Television. Listed by Marjut as a resource.

Exhibitions

Animation Plus 1994–1996. Exhibition.

A touring exhibition of original artwork and sets from Some Protection and The Stain. Collins Gallery, Glasgow, 19 February to 19 March 1994. International Animation Festival, Cardiff, 16 to 22 May 1994. National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, 21 June to 4 September 1994. University of Brighton Gallery, Brighton, 3 to 25 October 1994. Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Inverness, 5 November to 3 December 1994. Dundee, 10 December 1994 to 14 January 1995. Wellpark, West Lothian, 20 February to 20 March 1995. Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, 1 April to 14 May 1995. Salford Art Gallery and Museum, Salford, 28 May to 5 June 1995. Milton Keynes Exhibition Gallery, Milton Keynes, 8 July to 9 August 1995. Gracefield Arts Center, Dumfries, 19 August to 30 September 1995. City Arts Gallery, Leicester, 11 October to 11 November 1995. Museum of Moving Image, London, 26 November 1995 to 30 January 1996.
Artwork and films at BAFTA 1991, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, London. Exhibition.

Artwork from The Bridge and the Kellogg commercial, and a Valintatalo commercial, are shown in an exhibition organised by D&AD at BAFTA in London.
Film & Strip 2 November 1985, Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge. Exhibition. Group exhibition, part of the Cambridge Animation Festival.

A group exhibition, Film & Strip, at Kettle’s Yard Gallery as part of the Cambridge Animation Festival in November 1985. It showed original artwork from I’m not a Feminist, but… and later toured around Britain. The tour also visited Southampton City Art Gallery, 5 to 15 March 1987; Southwark Arts Libraries and Entertainment, 2 April to 5 May 1987; Hard Lines, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool Festival of Comedy, 25 to 26 June 1987; Air Gallery, London; Chapter Arts Center, Cardiff; Cooper Gallery, Barnsley; Belfast.
Animation artwork at BAFTA 1983, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, London. Exhibition.

Artwork from Marjut’s Kellogg commercial is shown in an exhibition of animation artwork at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London.
The Animation Show April 1981, Neal Street Gallery, London. Exhibition. Group exhibition.

Original artwork from Marjut’s Vivante and Kellogg commercials was shown in this group exhibition at the Neal Street Gallery in Covent Garden.
Animation Art January 1978, West Surrey College of Art and Design, Guildford. Exhibition.

Artwork from Marjut’s Farmarin Juissi commercial was shown in the Animation Art exhibition at the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Guildford, curated by Bob Godfrey.

Get in touch

For festival and screening enquiries, teaching, masterclasses, or correspondence:

marjut.rimminen@gmail.com