# Some Protection

> An animated documentary based on the true story of Josie O'Dwyer, with her own voice as personal commentary.

This is the Markdown rendering of [https://marjutrimminen.com/films/some-protection/](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/some-protection/), generated from the page itself. It carries the same words in the same order, with every image reduced to its description. The short map for machines is at [https://marjutrimminen.com/llms.txt](https://marjutrimminen.com/llms.txt). This page in Finnish is at [https://marjutrimminen.com/fi/lyhytelokuvat/some-protection/](https://marjutrimminen.com/fi/lyhytelokuvat/some-protection/).

# Some Protection

1987 · Animated documentary · 16mm · 9 minutes

Part of Blind Justice, a four-part Channel 4 series on women and the law

Video: [Some Protection on Vimeo](https://player.vimeo.com/video/398308714?dnt=1&byline=0&portrait=0&title=0)

![Still from Some Protection, prison cell](https://marjutrimminen.com/images/some-protection/some-protection-1987-josie-prison-cell.jpg)

An animated documentary based on the true story of Josie O'Dwyer, with her own voice as personal commentary. The film shows the devastating effect that detention and imprisonment have on young girls who are sent in "for their own protection".

![Still from Some Protection, Josie walking past neon lettering that reads GO away, an EXIT sign behind her](https://marjutrimminen.com/images/some-protection/some-protection-1987-josie-neon-go-away-sign.jpg)

![Still from Some Protection, HMP gates](https://marjutrimminen.com/images/some-protection/some-protection-1987-josie-hmp-prison-gates.jpg)

> 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

> 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

> As an animator, I function best in my room, in a kind of solitary confinement. When Josie says the only escape from horrible reality was to go inside her head, I understood that very well.
>
> – Marjut Rimminen, Jayne Pilling, Women and Animation, BFI

![Figures in blue and white coats and caps crowd around a small hatch; a face looks out.](https://marjutrimminen.com/images/some-protection/some-protection-1987-blue-figures-crowd-around-hatch.jpg)

- Free to stream at the [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/SomeProtectionMarjutRimminen), uploaded by producer Orly Yadin
- On the [Blind Justice DVD](https://yadinproductions.com/blind-justice/) from Yadin Productions, with the other three films of the series
- On the DVD of Tricky Women: AnimationsfilmKunst von Frauen (Schüren, Marburg, 2011)
- Distributed by [Cinenova](https://cinenova.org/), London

- **Finalist, Best Film**, 1988 [British Animation Awards](https://www.animatormag.com/archive/issue-28/issue-28-page-6/)
- **Finalist, Best Sound Track**, 1988 [British Animation Awards](https://www.animatormag.com/archive/issue-28/issue-28-page-6/)

Credits

- Research: Gail Pearce
- Design and animation: Marjut Rimminen
- Assistant animation: Kathleen Houston
- Painting: Adrian Kern, Vanessa Luther-Smith, Stoney Parsons, Debra Thaine
- Rostrum camera: Heather Reader
- Editing and sound: Picturehead Productions
- Narration: Josie O'Dwyer
- Voices: David Goodland, Jaqueline Holborough, Josie O'Dwyer
- Director: Marjut Rimminen
- Producer: Orly Yadin
- Production: A Smoothcloud Production for Channel Four Television

## Screenings and broadcasts

- 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](https://ukanimation.blogspot.com/2010/09/blind-justice-in-justice.html))
- In [Serious Animation: The Films of Orly Yadin](https://vtiff.org/events/serious-animation-orly-yadin/), Shelburne Museum, Vermont, 1 March 2020, with [The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/)

## Retrospectives

- **[Secret Cinema](https://www.markwebber.org.uk/2007/03/learned-by-heart.html)** 13 March 2007, Curzon Soho, London: [Learned by Heart](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/learned-by-heart/), [Many Happy Returns](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/many-happy-returns/) and Some Protection, followed by a conversation with Gareth Evans; organised by animate! and the Finnish Institute
- **[Tricky Women](https://www.trickywomen.at/)** 2008, personale at Topkino, Vienna: [Vivante](https://marjutrimminen.com/commercials/vivante/), [Absolut Marjut Rimminen](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/absolut-marjut-rimminen/), [Unicef AIDS Red Ribbon](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/unicef-aids-red-ribbon/), Some Protection, [The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/), [Many Happy Returns](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/many-happy-returns/) and [Learned by Heart](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/learned-by-heart/)

## Writing about the work

- **Some Protection, [The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/)**: Paul Wells, [Understanding Animation](https://books.google.com/books?id=G6IUoo_haJEC&pg=PA27) 1998, Routledge. Some Protection is the worked example of the documentary tendency in animation (page 27): the film "documents the deep anxiety of Josie O'Dwyer, using her own troubled recollections of abuse, petty crime and the brutalities of imprisonment, and effectively shows the perception of reality as it is experienced by O'Dwyer. Arguably, this is a more truthful reality and one which is only possible to document in animation." The Stain appears in the chapter on the feminine aesthetic ([page 199](https://books.google.com/books?id=G6IUoo_haJEC&pg=PA199)). The book spells her name Rimmenen throughout, index included
- **[I'm not a Feminist, but…](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/im-not-a-feminist-but/), Some Protection, [The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/)**: Jayne Pilling (ed.), [Women and Animation: A Compendium](https://books.google.com/books?id=8IKGAAAAIAAJ&q=Rimminen) 1992, British Film Institute. A three-page profile (pages 37 to 40) on the making of I'm not a Feminist, but… with Christine Roche, on Some Protection, and on The Stain, of which Pilling writes: "it's rare to meet someone who's seen The Stain who hasn't been, quite simply, knocked out by it"; plus a filmography entry. The source of several quotations on this site
- **[Learned by Heart](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/learned-by-heart/), Some Protection**: Annabelle Honess Roe, [Animated Documentary](https://books.google.com/books?id=NAmVy_4xZ58C&pg=PA150) 2013, Palgrave Macmillan. Learned by Heart is a case study of the chapter Animated Memories (pages 146 to 150 and 154 to 155): the film "disrupts any simple understanding of its superficially nostalgic aesthetic as reactionary or sentimental", and the afterword returns to how "Rimminen reconciles her childhood with the social evolution of Finland" (169). Some Protection is placed in the Blind Justice series ([page 13](https://books.google.com/books?id=NAmVy_4xZ58C&pg=PA13)); Marjut is among the filmmakers the book thanks for interviews
- **Some Protection**: Paul Wells, [The Beautiful Village and the True Village: A Consideration of Animation and the Documentary Aesthetic](https://database.jsas.net/mapping/en/items/ar0031997002/) 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
- **Some Protection, [The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/), [Many Happy Returns](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/many-happy-returns/), [Mixed Feelings](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/mixed-feelings/)**: Clare Kitson, [British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor](https://archive.org/details/britishanimation0000kits) 2008, Parliament Hill Books, the history of the channel's animation commissioning: of the Blind Justice series, "the final film, Some Protection by Marjut Rimminen, would attract the most accolades"; The Stain was "brought to the channel by two of the Blind Justice team"; Mixed Feelings and the credits of Many Happy Returns; a photograph of Marjut at Fantoche with its Grand Prix (page 165)
- **Some Protection**: Slava Greenberg, [Drawing the Line: Archiving Feminist Animation](https://doi.org/10.5749/movingimage.20.1-2.0070) 2020, The Moving Image 20, pages 70 to 84
- **[I'm not a Feminist, but…](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/im-not-a-feminist-but/), Some Protection**: Roger Noake, [Animation Techniques: Planning and Producing Animation with Today's Technologies](https://books.google.com/books?id=bpYQAQAAMAAJ&q=Rimminen) 1988: stills from I'm not a Feminist, but… opposite Christine Roche's drawings, with a note on how Rimminen simplified them for animation (pages 22 to 23), and Some Protection as the example in the chapter on sound and image (48 to 49)
- **Some Protection**: [Spare Rib](https://books.google.com/books?id=xgcdAQAAMAAJ) 1988: a review, "which effectively represents the sheer horror of our penal system"
- **Some Protection**: Maureen Furniss, [A New History of Animation](https://archive.org/details/animationglobalh0000furn) 2016, Thames & Hudson, page 408: the film in the Blind Justice series
- **Some Protection, [The Frog King](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-frog-king/), [The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/)**: Richard Taylor, [The Encyclopedia of Animation Techniques](https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofan0000tayl) 1996: stills from the three films with captions, "excellent examples" of their techniques
- **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](https://www.awn.com/blog/tricky-women-women-animation)
- **[The Stain](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/the-stain/), Some Protection**: [Sight and Sound](https://archive.org/details/sim_sight-and-sound_1992-10_2_6) October 1992, Jeanette Winterson's review of the year's shorts ("Two of the best shorts, The Stain…"), and a full entry on The Stain in the November 1992 issue for its BFI and Connoisseur video release; The Times, 17 August 1993, listing both films for television
- **Profiles and shorter pieces**: [Raising the BAAs](https://www.britishanimationawards.com/raising-the-baas/marjut-rimminen/) (British Animation Awards); [Great Women Animators](https://greatwomenanimators.com/marjut-rimminen/); the [Aurora 2007](https://archive.org/details/aurora2007possib0000auro) festival catalogue, with a biography and the tribute to Dick Arnall; [Out of the Animation Ghetto](https://www.awn.com/animationworld/out-animation-ghetto-clare-kitson-and-her-muffia) (Animation World Network, on Clare Kitson's commissions, naming Some Protection); The Lost Continent on [Blind Justice](https://ukanimation.blogspot.com/2010/09/blind-justice-in-justice.html), [Film & Strip](http://ukanimation.blogspot.com/2010/06/) and the [Animation Alliance UK](http://ukanimation.blogspot.com/2011/09/), of which she was a member with Phil Mulloy, Caroline Leaf, Clare Kitson, Jonathan Hodgson and Jayne Pilling
- **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](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/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

- [Learned by Heart](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/learned-by-heart/)
- [Urpo and Turpo](https://marjutrimminen.com/films/urpo-and-turpo/)

## Get in touch

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

[marjut.rimminen@gmail.com](mailto:marjut.rimminen@gmail.com)