This film is part of Free

Larn Yersel' Geordie

Learn how to speak Geordie with a riotous animation of Scott Dobsons popular vernacular lessons.

Animation & Artists Moving Image 1980 11 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for North East Film Archive

Overview

The innovative North East writer Scott Dobson first applied the word Geordie to Tyneside dialect in his book of 1969, a vernacular parody of elocution exercises. To celebrate 10 years since the publication of the popular Larn Yersel Geordie, the skilled animator Sheila Graber collaborated with Dobson on this wonderfully anarchic graphic animation for Tyne Tees TV (very Monty Python), which takes an irreverent look at Geordie culture and language.

This traditional photo-collage and hand-drawn cel animation was based on Scott Dobsons original art work. Dobson recorded the script in one take in his kitchen, his wife ad-libbing the closing lines. The fun interplay of text and image taps into the aesthetic of underground publications of the 1960s and of 70s punk zines. Sheila Graber gained international recognition for her animations of Rudyard Kiplings Just So Stories, commissioned by Nicole Jouve of Interama, agent for The Magic Roundabout, and broadcast worldwide to great acclaim. She went on to win several major awards from the Royal Television Society, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.