Ruth Peyser - There Was A Little Girl

Ruth Peyser has been making animated films since her arrival in New York from Australia in 1978. Her award-winning films have been screened on public television and at hundreds of festivals in the United States and throughout the world. A half hour segment of the PBS series Animated Women was devoted to her and her work. While Ruth was bringing up her daughters, she jotted down ideas for films and also wrote many short stories about her life. When her children were teenagers, she started developing a concept for a film from her writings. This evolved into her most recent film, There was a Little Girl. There was a Little Girl is an autobiographical animated film spanning fifty years, from 1959 to 2009. Ruth tells six stories from her life set ten years apart, each on a backdrop of political and social events of that year. It explores her personal growth and the relationships of three generations of women in her family.