00:11 I specialised in sculpture and audiovisual work,
00:14 but many years passed before I discovered animation.
00:17 It was love at first sight,
00:19 and since then I have never stopped working in animation.
00:21 I see it as the medium where I’m most comfortable,
00:24 where I’m most sincere
00:25 and everything comes to me more naturally.
00:27 I never run out of ideas,
00:29 and I don’t get tired of it.
00:34 What I love about independent animation
00:36 is that it’s so marginal,
00:39 so fringe that no one pays attention.
00:41 So, there are also no major points of reference or anything.
00:43 There is so much freedom
00:45 for that very reason, that it is entirely peripheral.
00:48 You do your work as best you can,
00:50 it is artistic work and, well,
00:55 we will find a way for it.
00:58 But the most important thing is artistic honesty,
01:01 and doing the best you can.
01:03 Then, after that, the other things will come.
01:10 I always start with the drawing,
01:13 with the image.
01:15 I often develop a series of images
01:18 that may be in sketch books
01:21 or could simply arise from a photo or some story.
01:26 From there, I also start developing the text or the script.
01:29 Both things happen in parallel,
01:34 and there comes a moment when the words also disappear.
01:39 For me at least,
01:41 words always allude to a real world,
01:44 a world of excess that is connected with the real image
01:47 and logical situations.
01:49 It seems to me that, in many cases,
01:54 that actually castrates what animation is,
01:58 which is imagining things that words perhaps cannot define.
02:36 ] There are certain things that have to be done in their place.
02:38 For example, I had to do all the shorts
02:40 that I’ve done on India, in India,
02:42 because in some way it is the wind at that moment
02:47 that will pass over the sheet, and will colour it for you differently.
02:50 For me, that has been quite important.
02:52 It is a place that I had dreamed of since I was a child,
02:55 and when I went, it honestly
02:59 stirred up so many stories and so much inspiration.
03:10 'Sultana's Dream' came about many years ago.
03:12 I was in New Delhi, it was raining,
03:15 and I was about to return home.
03:18 I went into an art gallery
03:20 where there was an exhibition
03:23 of a kind of tribal art that I liked very much.
03:27 By chance, I found ‘Sultana’s Dream’
03:30 on top of a table, which had a cover image
03:33 in that tribal art style of two women
03:35 flying a spaceship.
03:39 I turned the cover over and it said:
03:43 a feminist utopia
03:44 where women are in control and hold all the power
03:47 and men live locked away at home.
03:51 It was written by a Muslim woman in 1905,
03:54 who was raised in a very conservative environment
03:57 and hadn’t had any right to education.
04:02 At that moment it seemed like,
04:03 “Wow! What a story.”
04:05 It reminded me of my grandmother,
04:07 because my grandmother had grown up more or less
04:10 around that same time.
04:13 It reminded me of my grandmother, of my mother
04:15 and it reminded me of how many women there are,
04:17 and it kept expanding, and I said:
04:20 “This would honestly be a wonderful story to tell”.
04:34 The project had gone from place to place.
04:37 We always knew deep down that this story had to be told,
04:41 but we didn’t quite know how.
04:43 We combined a very traditional hand-painted part
04:48 with a digital one.
04:51 So there are certain things that perhaps repeat.
04:55 I also always used
04:57 many different techniques,
04:58 and I couldn’t imagine making a 2D film...
05:01 Actually, we have 52 minutes in ‘Sultana’s Dream’
05:04 that are 2D, but the technique is more difficult and arid.
05:07 It is done in a traditional way with watercolours,
05:10 with traditional drawing and painting
05:13 in a relatively traditional method.
05:22 So then I thought, well, look,
05:24 we have the excuse of 'Ladyland y el país de las mujeres',
05:27 it can be done with temporary tattoos,
05:29 that I honestly thought worked really well
05:32 as it is so symbolic,
05:34 because women decorate their bodies
05:36 from the North of Africa to India
05:39 the night before their wedding.
05:41 They adorn themselves
05:43 to deliver themselves to their spouse in marriage,
05:46 and I thought that was the perfect technique
05:48 to illustrate the nation of women.
05:51 We held workshops with temporary tattoo artists in India
05:55 that made all of the elements
05:57 that appear in this segment of the film.
05:59 And after another part, ‘La vida de Rokeya’,
06:02 which simulates Shadow Theatre,
06:06 was animated by María Manero.
06:08 We also reconstructed the Shadow Theatre,
06:12 which was traditional and a way
06:13 of communicating and entertaining
06:16 when Rokeya was a child.
06:22 We really took special care with the image,
06:24 because that is also our strength in creating images
06:26 and, as such, it is quite elaborate and takes a great deal of time.
06:32 Yes, it involves an incredible amount of work,
06:34 but people in animation know that.
06:36 It is for the hyperactives and those that really want to work,
06:41 because it is never-ending.
06:47 Sound is a basic.
06:49 Actually, there are many animators that work
06:52 with a preconceived soundtrack.
06:57 Meaning that before they start animating,
06:59 they already have an outline of what the sound
07:02 or music will be like, or what the sound design will be like,
07:06 because it truly helps a lot.
07:08 I’ve already been working with Gianmarco Serra
07:10 on the sound for years
07:12 and when we think about the sound on 'Sultana's Dream',
07:18 Gianmarco always proposed
07:20 that we could have different sound treatments
07:23 as we also had three different stories:
07:25 'El viaje de la donostiarra', 'La vida de Rokeya',
07:27 and 'Ladyland'.
07:34 On these trips, he recorded
07:37 all of the sound for the part of 'El viaje de la donostiarra'.
07:40 It is documentary sound recorded directly in India,
07:42 where each one of the scenes take place.
07:45 In the 'Ladyland' part, 'El país de las mujeres'
07:49 is more of a contemporary soundtrack,
07:52 with contemporary music that he is also going to compose.
07:55 The 'La vida de Rokeya' part
07:57 is the Shadow Theatre part.
08:00 We were able to get a poet and singer from Bengal,
08:04 Moushumi Bhowmi, to compose the soundtrack.
08:09 She composed the poem, meaning the lyrics,
08:14 and Tajdar Junaid composed the accompanying music
08:17 that is sung in 'La vida de Rokeya',
08:21 like a kind of troubadour in the most traditional sense.
08:24 We have always been working with the sound from day one,
08:27 even when we were in the visual storyboard
08:30 or animatic stage,
08:32 Gianmarco was already working on what the sound would be like
08:37 so that the image grew together with the sound.
08:46 We have spent so many years
08:48 and explored so many things
08:50 that I think everything behind this film
08:53 can inspire a lot of people.
08:56 Because that’s it, they're sketchbooks, they’re drawings,
08:59 they’re working with people,
09:01 but it’s also all within everyone’s reach.
09:08 Curiously enough, until now, everything that was
09:12 more independent animation and shorts,
09:15 I would say that it has been 60% women and 40% men.
09:19 In the animation industry, however
09:22 there were far more men than women.
09:24 Women were involved in everything to do with production
09:27 and colour, but they weren’t in animation.
09:32 And now, the numbers are slowly balancing out.
09:36 Right now, there are so many advantages
09:39 to being a women, finally.
09:41 Finally, there is a lot of support.
09:43 Finally, attention is being paid to being a women,
09:46 and the possibilities and opportunities
09:48 that we’re being given for that reason.
09:50 It’s like that positive affirmation they say in the US,
09:57 the fact that a lot of money is being invested in promoting women.
10:02 So that’s great, finally, it was needed.
10:06 We hope that within one or two generations,
10:10 , this kind of aid won’t be needed, and it won’t be necessary
10:12 necessary to talk so much about the fact
10:14 that it’s the work of a woman
10:16 No, we’re all already the same.
10:21 Tabakalera was our salvation
10:23 because we were looking for a place
10:26 New Caption
10:28 and we decided at the last second that it would be San Sebastian.
10:31 And even though they told me:
10:33 “look, the residencies are already assigned,
10:35 but we can move you around between one place and the next”,
10:37 and that was perfect.
10:38 We were here for six months,
10:40 and everything went spectacularly well.
10:42 Honestly, it was our salvation,
10:43 not just because of the space,
10:44 but also having a network of people that
10:47 weren’t doing animation but were dedicated to art,
10:51 that opens a lot of doors
10:53 and teaches you things
10:54 that you can honestly apply directly to your work.
10:57 This is one big school for everyone.
Tabakalera-denbora | Vincent Maraval
09:44
Tabakalera-denbora | Uxue Alberdi
08:14
Tabakalera-denbora | Ted Hope
08:54
Tabakalera-denbora | Susanna Tesconi
09:20
Tabakalera-denbora | Ricardo Díez Muiño
11:15
Tabakalera-denbora | Niño de Elche 08:48
Tabakalera-denbora | Maria Ptqk
09:47
Tabakalera-denbora | Marcos García
08:49
Tabakalera-denbora | Jone San Martín
10:07
Tabakalera-denbora | Jon Cazenave 07:43
Tabakalera-denbora | Javier Pérez Iglesias
07:49
Tabakalera-denbora | Helena Taberna
08:28
Tabakalera-denbora | Frédéric Martel 09:04
Tabakalera-denbora | Eva Sangiorgi
07:55
Tabakalera-denbora | Dea Kulumbegashvili 09:47
Tabakalera-denbora | Christine Vachon 07:26
Tabakalera-denbora | Celia Rico
08:30
Tabakalera-denbora | Esther Ferrer
12:43
Tabakalera-denbora | Beatriz Setién
05:15
Tabakalera-denbora | Marina Garcés
07:34