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My Love Affair with Marriage | Podcast interview with Signe Baumane

// Women in Animation



In the latest episode of Independent Animation, our companion podcast series to the Skwigly tie-in book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films (Taylor & Francis/CRC Press), we welcome back Signe Baumane to discuss her latest indie animated feature film My Love Affair with Marriage, which is about to embark on its US theatrical release following a multi-award-winning festival journey.

Since we last spoke with Signe nearer the start of the film’s production in our Intimate Animation podcast, the film has gone on an eventful production journey in the face of Covid, lockdowns and other struggles, coming out the other side to enjoy a massively successful run including Tribeca, Annecy (Jury Distinction), Animafest Zagreb (Winner: Grand Prix), VAF (Winner: Best Feature), Anifilm (Winner: Best Feature), FAF (Winner: Best Feature), New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival (Winner: Grand Prix), ITFS Stuttgart (Honorary Trikstar Award), MAF, Fantoche, Les Sommets du Cinema d’Animation, Kaboom, Tokyo Anime Award Festival and Anima Brussels among many others.

From Signe Baumane, director of Rocks in My Pockets, comes a new award-winning animated feature about a spirited young woman determined to find love in the bewildering world. My Love Affair With Marriage follows Zelma on her 23-year quest for perfect love and lasting marriage set against a backdrop of historic events in Eastern Europe.

Told from a woman’s point of view, the film blends historical, biological, societal, and emotional arcs with a lively sense of humor and musical numbers. This animated film for adults tackles the issues of love, gender norms, domestic violence, fantasies and toxic relationships to propel a woman’s journey toward independence and liberation.

My Love Affair with Marriage (Dir. Signe Baumane)

Written, directed and animated by Signe Baumane with additional animation by Yajun Shi and a musical score by Kristian Sensini, My Love Affair with Marriage tells the story of Zelma, an eastern European woman in search of a husband whilst beholden to all manner of intricate brain functions and bodily reactions that determine her behaviour and the decisions she makes. Along the way she is dogged by three mythology sirens, shape-shifting creatures who exert enormous pressures on Zelma – through song – to conform to traditional social standards of femininity. Expanding on themes and mixed-media technical approaches previously explored in such prior work as Teat Beat of Sex and her debut feature Rocks in My Pockets, the film has been critically praised as “funny, moving, and visually stunning throughout” (rogerebert.com) “an exuberant and complex movie about the journey to female rebellion” (Huffpost) and “A joyfully exuberant piece of work” (Cineuropa).

Stream the episode below or download here:

Upcoming North American screenings:

Learn more about the film at myloveaffairwithmarriagemovie.com

In this article:

Kristian SensiniMy Love Affair with MarriageSigne BaumaneYajun Shi

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