Adapted from the cartoons and drawings of Christine Roche
Watch out: if you insist on saying “I’m not a Feminist, but…”, then you may well find yourself pushing the old man over the edge or behind the sofa, as the case may be.
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
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
Gold Hugo nomination, Best Short Film, 1987 at the Chicago International Film Festival
Credits
Animation
Marjut Rimminen
Additional animation
Jeff Goldner, Kathleen Houston (credited as Spud)
Tracing
Gail Pearce, Christine Dawe, Russell Murch, Christine Roche
Painting
Debra Thaine, Denise Hambry, Stoney Parsons, Chris Rayment, Tessa Sheridan
Best boy
Timo Arnall, credited as Dan
Rostrum camera
Cartoon Camera Company, Wolff Productions, Begonia Tamarit
Editing and sound
Charlotte Evans
Voices
Glynis Brooks, David Tate, Anita West
Music
Composed and performed by Dick Heckstall-Smith and Dave Moore. Sung by Lorna Rowe and Tracy King.
Recorded and mixed at
Strand Recording Studio, Kew, London
Special thanks
Diana Wilson
Director
Marjut Rimminen
Producer
Dick Arnall
Production
A Marjut Rimminen Animation production in association with Channel Four Television
Screenings and broadcasts
Premiere at the Cambridge Animation Festival, November 1985
Original artwork in Film & Strip, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 1985, later touring to Southampton, Southwark, Liverpool, London, Cardiff, Barnsley and Belfast
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
In the Focus on Finland programme at the Animateka festival, Ljubljana, 2009, with Learned by Heart
Jayne Pilling (ed.), Women and Animation: A Compendium, British Film Institute, 1992. A three-page profile of Marjut (pages 37 to 40) tells how she made I’m not a Feminist, but… with Christine Roche, and the book’s filmography lists the film.
Roger Noake, Animation Techniques: Planning and Producing Animation with Today’s Technologies, 1988. Stills from the film sit opposite Christine Roche’s drawings, with a note on how Marjut simplified them for animation (pages 22 to 23). Noake names the film, with When the Wind Blows, among the most successful comic-strip adaptations of the 1980s.
“The satirical I’m Not A Feminist, But…” Finland: A Cultural Encyclopedia, Finnish Literature Society, 1997, page 18. The entry on Finnish animation names the film, with The Stain, among the animated films made for adults.
“The ironic, polemic I’m not a Feminist, but…” Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation, 1994, page 322, first published in Italian in 1988. The book follows Marjut from Vivante and Zagreb to advertising work in Britain, and to this film.
Doris V. Sutherland, Women in British Animation: A Short Introduction, Women Write About Comics, 2016. Names Marjut and Christine Roche as the talents behind I’m not a Feminist, but…, and as contributors to the Blind Justice series.
