Jonathan Hodgson is an internationally renowned, BAFTA winning animation director based in London. He studied animation at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. He was the animation director of Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex, the first full length animated documentary on British TV.
After leaving the Royal College of Art in 1985 with an MA in Film & Television his first professional commission was to co-direct The Doomsday Clock, a ten minute animation about nuclear disarmament for the United Nations. He went on to work as a director at several animation studios before co-founding Sherbet in 1996. At Sherbet he directed many high profile advertising campaigns including SAAB USA, United Bank of Switzerland, Vanguard, Home Office, Persil and collaborated with legendry illustrator Maurice Sendak on a US advertising campaign for Bell Atlantic Telecommunications Network. In 2007 he was the art director on the animated TV series Charlie and Lola and the following year was the animation director on the groundbreaking crowd funded documentary feature The Age of Stupid. His short films have won numerous awards including a BAFTA in 2000 for The Man with the Beautiful Eyes and a BAFTA nomination in 2002 for Camouflage.
He has presented retrospectives of his work in the UK, Brazil, Sweden, Israel, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Poland and in 2006 was invited by the National Film Board of Canada to present master classes in three major cities. His work is featured in numerous books and DVD compilations. Since the mid 1980’s he has lectured extensively in the UK and abroad and since 2008 has led the Animation degree at Middlesex University, London.
He continues to combine teaching with animated filmmaking through his own production company Hodgson Films and is represented by Papy3D in France by Sherbet in the UK. He has recently directed animated documentaries Mostafaei for Amnesty International’s End the Death Penalty campaign, Guantanamo Bay: The Hunger Strikes for Guardian Films and collaborated with Alain de Botton on a short film entitled What Comes After Religion for The School of Life.
Source: Hodgson Films
