Part of Blind Justice, a four-part Channel 4 series on women and the law
An animated documentary based on the true story of Josie O'Dwyer, with her own voice as personal commentary. The film shows the devastating effect that detention and imprisonment have on young girls who are sent in "for their own protection".
The impact of Some Protection owes much to her ability to evoke visually and kinetically the moods, emotions and feelings of the protagonist, Josie O'Dwyer, as she narrates the true story of her experiences of detention and imprisonment.
James Leahy, The Guardian, 5 November 1987
It is widely assumed that documentary is about Griersonian grit, Flaherty fact and Wiseman wisdom, but this is to neglect the rich and varied tradition of documentary in the animated film. From Winsor McCay's Sinking of the Lusitania, to Marjut Rimminen's subjective documentary Some Protection, to Jan Svankmajer's The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. Animation has documented the personal, social and political events that have shaped the world.
Dr Paul Wells, National Film Theatre lecture, November 1996
As an animator, I function best in my room, in a kind of solitary confinement. When Josie says the only escape from horrible reality was to go inside her head, I understood that very well.
Marjut Rimminen, Jayne Pilling, Women and Animation, BFI
Free to stream at the Internet Archive, uploaded by producer Orly Yadin
On the Blind Justice DVD from Yadin Productions, with the other three films of the series
On the DVD of Tricky Women: AnimationsfilmKunst von Frauen (Schüren, Marburg, 2011)
Adrian Kern, Vanessa Luther-Smith, Stoney Parsons, Debra Thaine
Rostrum camera
Heather Reader
Editing and sound
Picturehead Productions
Narration
Josie O'Dwyer
Voices
David Goodland, Jaqueline Holborough, Josie O'Dwyer
Director
Marjut Rimminen
Producer
Orly Yadin
Production
A Smoothcloud Production for Channel Four Television
Screenings and broadcasts
Broadcast on Channel 4 in February 1990 under the series title In Justice, renamed at the last minute because the BBC had a drama called Blind Justice (The Lost Continent)
Secret Cinema13 March 2007, Curzon Soho, London: Learned by Heart, Many Happy Returns and Some Protection, followed by a conversation with Gareth Evans; organised by animate! and the Finnish Institute
Some Protection, The Stain: Paul Wells, Understanding Animation1998, Routledge. Some Protection is the worked example of the documentary tendency in animation (page 27): the film "documents the deep anxiety of Josie O'Dwyer, using her own troubled recollections of abuse, petty crime and the brutalities of imprisonment, and effectively shows the perception of reality as it is experienced by O'Dwyer. Arguably, this is a more truthful reality and one which is only possible to document in animation." The Stain appears in the chapter on the feminine aesthetic (page 199). The book spells her name Rimmenen throughout, index included
I'm not a Feminist, but…, Some Protection, The Stain: Jayne Pilling (ed.), Women and Animation: A Compendium1992, British Film Institute. A three-page profile (pages 37 to 40) on the making of I'm not a Feminist, but… with Christine Roche, on Some Protection, and on The Stain, of which Pilling writes: "it's rare to meet someone who's seen The Stain who hasn't been, quite simply, knocked out by it"; plus a filmography entry. The source of several quotations on this site
Learned by Heart, Some Protection: Annabelle Honess Roe, Animated Documentary2013, Palgrave Macmillan. Learned by Heart is a case study of the chapter Animated Memories (pages 146 to 150 and 154 to 155): the film "disrupts any simple understanding of its superficially nostalgic aesthetic as reactionary or sentimental", and the afterword returns to how "Rimminen reconciles her childhood with the social evolution of Finland" (169). Some Protection is placed in the Blind Justice series (page 13); Marjut is among the filmmakers the book thanks for interviews
Some Protection, The Stain, Many Happy Returns, Mixed Feelings: Clare Kitson, British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor2008, Parliament Hill Books, the history of the channel's animation commissioning: of the Blind Justice series, "the final film, Some Protection by Marjut Rimminen, would attract the most accolades"; The Stain was "brought to the channel by two of the Blind Justice team"; Mixed Feelings and the credits of Many Happy Returns; a photograph of Marjut at Fantoche with its Grand Prix (page 165)
Some Protection: Birgitt Wagner and Waltraud Grausgruber (eds), Tricky Women: AnimationsfilmKunst von Frauen 2011, Schüren, Marburg, with the film on the book's DVD; reviewed by Sharon Katz in Animation World Network
The Stain, Some Protection: Sight and SoundOctober 1992, Jeanette Winterson's review of the year's shorts ("Two of the best shorts, The Stain…"), and a full entry on The Stain in the November 1992 issue for its BFI and Connoisseur video release; The Times, 17 August 1993, listing both films for television
Listed in: The British Edge (1987); British National Film and Video Catalogue (1989); The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (1991); Arrows of Desire: New Directions in British Film and Video (1993); The British Cinema Source Book (1995, the BFI's viewing copies of Some Protection and The Stain); Film, Video and Multimedia Guide (1997); The Complete Index to British Sound Film Since 1928 and the Facets Video Encyclopedia (1999); Kino plus (2002); Directory of World Cinema: Finland (2012); and the Finnish periodical index, the Art Index, the Humanities Index and the International Index to Film Periodicals
