Step by Step (1978)
★★½ — Step by Step (1978)
Step by Step is a short animated film from 1978, running to just ten minutes and produced by Hubley Studios. It was made in honour of the United Nations International Year of the Child, a 1979 initiative that drew global attention to the welfare, rights and living conditions of children across the world. The film arrives, then, with a clear moral purpose: it is not entertainment for its own sake but something closer to an animated pamphlet, asking its audience to consider what childhood looks like when stripped of safety, comfort and basic rights. That context matters. This is a film that sets out to make you feel something and, more than that, to prompt a response.
The film was directed by Faith Hubley, one half of the celebrated husband-and-wife filmmaking partnership that gave American independent animation much of its distinct identity in the post-war decades. Following the death of her husband John Hubley in 1977, Faith continued producing work through Hubley Studios, and Step by Step stands as an early example of her solo output. Her approach to animation, both under the partnership and after, consistently favoured a loose, painterly aesthetic over the clean lines of studio product, something that gives even her more serious films a sense of warmth that the subject matter might otherwise resist. For an animation of this kind, that warmth is not incidental. It is doing real work. If you are curious about how short-form animation can carry genuine emotional weight, it is worth looking at some of the other animated work covered here, including The OceanMaker (2014) and Josep (2020), both of which use the form to address subjects that sit well outside the usual animated comfort zone.
In terms of cast, no principal voice performers are credited in available information, which is not unusual for a short film of this kind, particularly one in which the imagery does most of the communicating. The film moves through a loose historical sweep, from scenes of suffering and exploitation to something resembling hope, grounding its argument in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It is a short film with large ambitions, polished but plainspoken, earnest without ever quite tipping into sentimentality. As a piece of 1970s independent American animation, it sits comfortably alongside other work from that decade that took cinema seriously as a vehicle for social and political ideas, a tendency you can see across quite different films from the same period, such as A River Called Titas (1973) and Candomblé in Togo (1972).
A-Z World Movie Challenge Syria https://youtu.be/AOQlPTjkU_0?si=gTEHTDqtndSr8KWv A glimpse into the lives and families of Syrians in the late 70s. The cinematography is raw. The outlook is extremely bleak. I started this challenge to experience cultures from around the world but man sometimes it's still shocking. Hard to score so going straight average.
That instinct to keep seeking out films from corners of the world I might not otherwise think to look is exactly why this challenge keeps throwing up moments that stop me cold. You go in expecting to tick a box and come out having sat with something genuinely difficult. For me, that is the point, even when, or maybe especially when, the scoring feels almost beside the point. Sometimes a film earns its place simply by refusing to look away.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1978 | Watched: 2025-09-09
Related on Movies With Macca
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
