Shorts From The “La Casa Lobo” Side_2019

You have to see this stuff to believe it. Even then……

‘Hands on’ doesn’t really cut it when trying to describe this kind of work. It’s a form of animating whose technique is not just immediately evident to the eye of the beholder, it goes out of its way to get in your face. Whole rooms are turned into sets which become surfaces to animate onto or the materials for frame by frame destruction as one scene morphs to another. Like devil-childs unsupervised in a house with paint, dirt and the tools to eviscerate the very habitat their films and characters dwell in, animators working in this realm leave their mark on every inch of the environments they profoundly alter in the making of their films.

Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, the artists behind the feature “La Casa Lobo” (screening Sat July 20th 8:15pm) bring a jubilantly dark breath to this form. “La Casa Lobo” is a feature unlike any other we have seen here at MIAF and this collection of their earlier shorts helps prepare you for what you will encounter. It is – quite simply – astonishing work, and all the more so for the ferociously obvious way in which it is crafted… this is magic that doesn’t care if you can see the trick.

The program will opened with an extended introduction that looks at the work of these filmmakers and some others who have mastered the form, along with examples of the industrial scale animation they have created.

Lucia – Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña copyLucia
Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña
Chile, 3’49, 2007
The haunting core of a house in a state of breathing self-destruction is reaching for possession of Lucia.

Luis
Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña
Chile, 4’02, 2008
Who is more damaged, more frightened, more dangerous – Luis or the house?

Los Andes
Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña
Chile, 4’00, 2013
A haunted office erupts with jagged, whispered prophesies of an uncertain future.