Antoinette Starkiewicz

Animator, Artist, Educator, Producer, Writer

1949

Poland

• Austrialian Film Commission
• British Film Institute

Biography

Antoinette Starkiewicz is a Polish-Australian animator, writer, and multimedia artist who has worked on many animated works in Australia and the United Kingdom. Her work is known for feminist themes and use of fluid linework. (Baker, 2023)

Family and early life

Starkiewicz was born to a Jewish family in Poland in 1949. At the age of ten, she immigrated with her family to Melbourne, Australia. While she began her artistic career by studying music and dance throughout the late 1960s, in college she majored in painting at the National Art Gallery of Victoria’s Art School. (Baker, 2023)

Career outline

After graduating college, Starkiewicz lived in the artist community of Labassa in Melbourne. While at Labassa, she made her first animated film, named Secrets of Madam X (1970) with support from the Australian Film Development Corporation. In 1974, Starkiewicz went to London to continue her studies in animation at the London film school, producing a number of 2-D animated shorts including Puttin on the Ritz (1974). It was in the UK that she would make her first widely circulated short, the animation High Fidelity (1976), which was screened by the British Broadcasting Corporation and at the Cannes Film Festival. (Baker, 2023)

In the late 1970s, Starkiewicz moved back to Australia and worked with The Yellow House artist Collective in Sydney. (Baker, 2023) At the time, The Yellow House was home to a number of artists in various disciplines like painting, sculpture, and animation, who worked together to create multimedia works that challenged social norms. (Organ, 2016, pg.27) While working at the collective, Starkiewicz made a number of her most acclaimed films including Pussy Pumps Up (1979) and Pianoforte (1984). (Baker, 2023) Pussy Pumps Up in particular had a great critical reception, being the first film to win an Australian Film Institute award in the category of animation. (Starkiewicz, 2022)

During the late 1980s into the 1990s, Starkiewicz began to shift her style from her previous use of 2-D handdrawn animation to digital and video art. In 1988 she earned a master’s degree in Computer Animation and Digital Imaging from the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School. The same year, she released Zipper, a multi-media digital animation project about the invention of the zipper. (Baker, 2023) 

Throughout her career, Starkiewicz has written for a number of cinema and animation journals, also working as a film critic for Screen magazine where she covered events like the International Animation Festival. (Starkiewicz, 1992, pg. 13) She also gives talks at schools and colleagues about her journey as a woman in the animation industry. (Baker, 2023)

Personal style

In both her 2-D and digital films, Starkiewicz uses a lot of movement, fluidity, and lines in her animation. (Milner et al, 2016) Her films also feature themes of sexuality, gender fluidity, and feminism. (Starkiewicz, 2022)

Filmography

References:

Baker, Andrea Jean. “Subversive, Feminist Glamour in the Boys’ Club of Animation” FilmInk, 2023 https://www.filmink.com.au/subversive-feminist-glamour-in-the-boys-club-of-animation/ Accessed 17 Feb, 2026.

Milner, Jacquline, Jane Schinder and Deborah Szapiro. “These Australian Feminist Films of the 1990s Were Revolutionary, We Can’t Let Them Dissapear” The Guardian, 19, Aug, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/film/commentisfree/2016/aug/19/the-australian-feminist-films-of-the-90s-were-revolutionary-we-cant-let-them-disappear Accessed 17 Feb, 2026.

Organ, Michael. K. “The Yellow House Revisited” Aquarius Redux: Rethinking Architecture’s Counter Culture Confrence, University of Wollongong, Wollongong. Jan, 2016, pg. 1-31,  https://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/685  Accessed 17 Feb, 2026.

Starkiewicz, Antoinette. “Oral History Excerpt: Pussy Pumps Up.” National Film and Soud Archive of Australia, 2022 https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/101645-antoinette-starkiewicz-oral-history-excerpt-pussy-pumps Accessed 17 Feb, 2026.

Starkiewicz, Antoinette. “Reviews: Working the Circuit- Cardiff.” Screen, Issue 850, 27. Mar. 1992, pg. 13 https://www.proquest.com/docview/963127776?accountid=14771&pq-origsite=primo&sourcetype=Magazines Accessed 17 Feb, 2026.