19 January 2011

Narrator: Lucia



This is 'Lucia', an awarded short stop-motion animation film (a part of the 'Lucia, Luis & El Lobo' series) created and directed by Cristóbal León as the animator, Niles Atallah as the art director and Joaquín Cociña as the writer (2007, produced by the Diluvio Gallery, Chile).
In a unique merge of illustration and stop-motion animation, we see a sequence of digital stills with animation, charcoal drawings, puppets and other props. The film is shot frame by frame with a digital camera. Every visual element comes to life as it self-constructs, hides, re-appears, self-destructs ...
The narrative is whispered by the charcoal Lucia, appearing and vanishing from the frame. We soon realise that the narrator is not reliable, the real story is hidden behind the whispered distortions and changing frames: we may never be in position to reconstruct it.
The authors themselves describe the series as stories "of a physical and mental world that falls apart, destroys itself and reconstructs itself time and again." As the narrator changes, the space and story repeatedly dismantle and reassemble to mirror those changes.
"What makes this such an exciting project for us," the authors conclude, "is the idea of making a feature film like one creates a painting or sculpture: a film made of cardboard, charcoal and waste."

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