Overview
Annabel Jankel (born 1 June 1955), also known as AJ Jankel, is a British film and TV director who first came to prominence as a music video director and the co-creator of the pioneering cyber-character Max Headroom and as co-director of the film adaptation of Super Mario Bros. She is the sister of musician and songwriter Chaz Jankel, who is best known as a member of new wave band Ian Dury & The Blockheads.
Early career
She started her career in the late 1970s at the UK-based film production company Cucumber Studios which she founded with her partner - fellow director Rocky Morton. Jankel and Morton specialized in creating music videos, TV commercials and TV title sequences using a combination of live action, animation and the then emerging art of computer graphics. In this period the duo directed several music videos for performers including Rush ("The Enemy Within"), Elvis Costello ("Accidents Will Happen"), Talking Heads ("Blind"), Tom Tom Club ("Genius of Love", "Pleasure of Love", "Don't Say No"), Donald Fagen ("New Frontier") and Miles Davis ("Decoy").
In 1985, Jankel and Morton won an Emmy Award for their title sequence for the NBC show Friday Night Videos. And that same year their innovative TV commercial for the newly launched soft drink Quatro gained recognition at the British Television Advertising Awards.
In 2003, their 1978 music video for Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" was one of only 35 videos selected for inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art's prestigious "Golden Oldies of Music Video" exhibition. Their music videos are found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).