Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘The Girl With The Rivet Gun’

Review Fix chats with “The Girl With The Rivet Gun” co-directors Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly, who discusses the inspiration for the film and more.

Review Fix: How did you come across the stories of Esther Horne, Susan Taylor King and Mildred Crow Sargent?

Kirsten Kelly: The first seeds for this project began all the way back in 2010, when we produced and directed a filmed oral history archive for NYU’s Tamiment Library Labor Archives with our fellow producer Elizabeth Hemmerdinger. We collected the personal histories from 48 real-life Rosie the Riveters from all around the country and Esther Horne, Susan Taylor King, and Mildred Crow Sargent were all a part of that project. We were surprised and deeply moved by their stories of breaking barriers of gender, race, and economics during WWII, and then how this moment in time for them so greatly informed the rest of their lives.  We had never heard so much of this extraordinary history, and we wanted get these stories to a wide audience and front and center in schools and museums – we wanted them heard loudly!  

Review Fix: Why is the topic of this film important today?

Kelly: This project has always been about championing the untold stories of women in our world, about breaking barriers and pushing limits, and we need those stories as much now as ever before.  We are – at long last – seeing a cultural shift where more complex women’s stories and experiences are more front and center in our larger society. Recognizing and more deeply understanding how pivotal this â€œRosie” movement was in our history and what it did for women as a whole is quite powerful. And by putting the focus on real women who were Rosies – many of whom are now in their 90’s and even 100’s – we feel privileged to be capturing this meaningful history before it is lost. 

Review Fix: How difficult was this film to put together ?    

Kelly: When we wanted to explore using animation to bring the Rosie’s stories to life, we began by holding a workshop with four women animators to help us develop our ideas further.  Danielle Ash was one of the first animators recommended to us and we immediately fell in love with her unique style of constructed cardboard animation. Esther Horne, one of the Rosies featured in The Girl with the Rivet Gun, was able to attend the workshop in person and talk with Danielle and the other animators directly, which was just amazing.  Coming out of that experience, we worked on crafting the larger story and individual ideas for scenes, as Danielle created the character design, sets, and literally hundreds of tiny cardboard props.  Her frankly brilliant imagination and level of detail were constantly inspiring to us.  

Review Fix: What was the feeling like on set? 

Kelly: The actual stop-motion animation is so labor intensive, especially in the beginning of the process, that Danielle would work on her own for weeks at a time building the puppets and sets, but it was always such a joy to visit the studio for our story sessions together and see the progress.  Once the raw animation started to come in and we were in the edit room with the piece, we brought an amazing sound designer Andrea Bella onto the team to create the sounds of the factories and life in the 1940’s, and everything really came together.  It has been a very special process from beginning to end!

Review Fix: How have the audiences been reacting to The Girl With Rivet Gun?  

Kelly: It’s been an amazing experience to watch this film begin to meet the world.  Audiences are delighted by Danielle Ash’s animation and the style in which we’ve told the story, and we’ve heard time and again that people never knew any of these details about Rosie. We’ve screened for ages from 5 years to 95 years and we’ve seen such joy in learning all of these details about real life Rosies.  Plus people simply fall in love with Esther, Susan and Millie. 

Review Fix: What films have inspired it the most?  

Kelly: We were inspired by a lot of experimental and independent animation, including Danielle Ash’s earlier works Pickles for Nickels and Pigeon Dance.  But we were also deeply effected by some of the period propaganda films from the 1940s that really expose the deep male chauvinism of that era and the mindset that these women faced when they entered an industrial workplace run entirely by men.  There’s one incredible training film in particular that was made by the U.S. Office of Education called “Problems in Supervision – Supervising Women Workers” which is completely over the top in its advice on how supervisors should contend with â€œthe eternal feminine” that really has to be seen to be believed.

Review Fix: The Girl With Rivet Gun was scheduled to screen at Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival but due to the recent situation with the Coronavirus, it has been postponed until August What are your thoughts on this?

Kelly: These are extraordinary times to be living through and it feels like absolutely everyone – including major cultural institutions like Cinequest – is having to completely rethink how they are going to operate through the immediate crisis and well into the future.  Keeping everyone safe is the most important thing, and we’re so thankful that Cinequest took the steps they did to protect everyone so early, and also that they are rescheduling for late in the summer.  We’re certainly all going to be ready to celebrate when this is over!  

Review Fix: What have you learned about yourselves through this entire process?  

Anne de Mare:  I think working on this piece helped me to let go of a lot of fears that I wasn’t even fully aware I had about growing older â€” I mean, older women seriously rock.  And I also learned that I truly love working with animation as a creative medium, pushing at the boundaries of what documentary film can be.  

Kelly:  I think it’s truly made me want to have more older people as friends in my life and community. We so often relegate the elderly to the fringes of society, and through this project, I got to listen to so many wonderful stories and experiences that have made my life richer. It’s made me see how tremendously valuable they are to our society and how much we all need them. It’s made me try to be more intentional in developing friendships and spending time with people who are different ages, specifically elders, and how much they bring to our lives. 

Review Fix: What’s next?  

Kelly: We are currently in production for a feature documentary around men’s activism to help end violence against women that should premiere in 2021/2022.  And, after The Girl with the Rivet Gun, we plan to keep making short animated films that tell amazing, strong, unexpected and often unheard stories of women in the world!