INTERVIEW WITH ISABEL HERGUERA

Isabel Herguera, visual artist, director and animation producer from San Sebastian, will receive the Animac 2024 Honorary Award, the first Spaniard to be awarded this award. From San Sebastián, Herguera, who directed Animac from 2003 to 2011, talks about her cinema and her experience at the festival.

Animac will dedicate a retrospective to Isabel Herguera with the screening of a selection of her short films, including her first and long-awaited feature film “Sultana’s Dream” (Spain, Germany, 2023), nominated for this year’s Goya Awards and with the which was nominated for the Golden Shell and won the Basque Cinema award at the last San Sebastián Festival. In addition, the director will offer a masterclass for the Animac audience where she will review her work within the world of animated cinema.

In addition to the retrospective and the masterclass by Isabel Herguera, the Animac public will be able to get closer to her creative process by visiting the exhibition “Sultana’s Dream. Creative Process” which will be hosted by the Espai Cavallers de Lleida (Calle Cavallers, 31-33) where a selection of original drawings will be exhibited, the first sketches of which were fifteen years ago, and other materials from the film.

 

Your professional career is linked to Animac, how do you remember your time directing the exhibition?

They are very happy years that were of great training. I came from working in animation, but I was very disconnected from what was being done in independent animation. So Animac was essential to meet people, motivate me, stimulate me, to want to make films, to want to tell stories, to dare things. It was a luxury to have the reference of all those artists who came every year to show wonderful things in Lleida, a perfect city to spend four full days, with the ideal size, without so many places to get lost. I met incredible people with whom I still have a lot of relationships. They were great years for me and lots of fun.

 

Any of your references in the world of animation?

Without a doubt, Anca Damian. For me, “Crulic, Path to the Beyond,” the first of his films, was fundamental, because I saw that, with a relatively low budget and a very free way of making animation, stories could also be told. Also “The Magic Mountain”, because there was a change in techniques that were not common. I invited her to come to the KHM school (Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln) to present her films and she seemed to me to be a very generous person, who listened to the students and gave them advice. She defends that “the most talented is not the one who makes the film in the end, but rather the one who continues insistently and works until the end.” You don’t need to draw or know anything about animation, but rather know how to tell stories or have the intention of telling them and have a certain taste for something. It should be remembered that she comes from real image and documentary, mainly photography direction, with a particular taste for all artistic direction.

 

This year Animac will be dedicated to diversity, how do you think animated films can explore diversity in society?

In animated films you can do everything. You can make the characters whatever color you want, you can make them from the material and shape you want. Diversity, with a broad outlook, is present in its very origin [of animation]. You can give life to everything. In this sense, what fascinated me most about animation when I discovered it is that it reminded me of when I was a girl and played with dolls. I told stories to my brothers and in those moments they were whatever they were, whatever we had on hand. Animation is that, the freedom of being able to do anything, being able to tell a story simply by moving it.

 

Your recent feature film, the first of your career, “Sultana’s Dream”, has had an excellent reception with the Basque Cinema Award at the last San Sebastián Festival, in addition to being nominated for the Golden Shell for Best Film What has this work and the subsequent recognition meant for you?

The years that this work has lasted have been very intense, especially the last three. It was like living in several realities at the same time. That it was selected at the Zinemaldia in Donosti was the greatest of all awards. Firstly because we knew that, thanks to the festival, the film was going to have worldwide recognition. And second, because it is my home and it has a very deep emotional value. I have made a lot of films there, they have never hesitated to give me a space, a place, with overwhelming generosity. For me it was also essential to be able to show it and have the première in Zinemaldia.

 

What was the production process of the film like?

In “Sultana’s Dream” there were many holes that we filled in as others opened up. The process of figuring things out for me happened like this. Some producers at one point might have said, “No, you have to figure it all out from the beginning.” But in our case it was emerging in a more organic way. Someone told me that when a pianist has rehearsed the piece very well, before entering the stage he always has to go with fear, with the feeling that he is walking a tightrope. And for me that is also fundamental. It gives me a great boost and keeps me very motivated knowing that I want to do something and that I have a lot of security, but also that every time I enter the studio I am on a tightrope.

 

Returning to the theme of diversity, “Sultana’s Dream” is based on an Indian feminist story written by Rokeya Hossain and published in 1905, what does that story have and what has moved you to bring it to the field of animation ?

When I found the book, on the back cover you could read “A feminist utopia. A place where women have knowledge, because both power and men who are ignorant live in seclusion.” And furthermore, it was written by Rokeya Hossain, who had not had access to formal education, but rather she had learned what she was supposed to learn in order not to be a threat in the marriage. And I thought, “It’s been 105 years, where are we with all this?” Once I started reading the book, I realized that one of the reasons why Rokeya Hossain had created this city of women was simply to be safe, to not feel this feeling that we all have of having to be more alert. beyond our class, condition, skin color, language… And for me that has been a revealing fact. Another great exercise that I have done throughout all these years as a result of the book is this backwards turn that Rokeya proposes: seeing myself from the point of view of my brother who was sitting there. How I look? What things do I do out of education, out of culture, out of instinct? What kind of behaviors are imprinted in our DNA. It is a book with contradictions and that often reminded me of my grandmother because of that somewhat hypocritical component with what is understood by religion or belief. But it didn’t matter, because it is absolutely radical for the time in which it was written and for today.

 

How did you get the collaboration in the film of two totems of philosophy and culture such as Paul B. Preciado, an iconic figure of the theories of postfeminism and gender philosophy, and Mary Beard, English academic specialized in ancient Rome?

In 2015, I was in San Sebastián writing the script for the film and I attended some conferences on utopias that Paul B. Preciado was giving. It left me totally fascinated by the use of language and how it made sense of totally absurd things in this utopia. And when we wrote the script, we wrote a scene to Paul B. Preciado and through a mutual acquaintance we accessed it. It was during the pandemic, a sound engineer went to his house, recorded it and did our voice, so I am very grateful to him.

And then Mary Beard because I always love her, and I ran into her one day by chance at the Capitolini Museum, which is where she is in the scene of the movie. Just a few months later I discovered the book “Women and Power” and the conferences she had given. I asked him for permission to use that part of the conference that is in the film and he gave it to me. The two collaborations were very easy.

 

If anyone can properly adapt this book by Rokeya Hossain, a feminist book, a book from India, it is you, because your relationship with this country goes back a long way. You have been going there for many years to do workshops. What is your artistic vital relationship with India?

Since I was very young, my relationship with India has been enormous, especially during a specific time. From 2005 to 2015, she spent six months a year teaching classes at the National Institute of Design or doing workshops with women and children. For me, India is one of these places that, even though I don’t speak the same language, I feel at home. And from that place, feeling at home and with all the respect in the world, I have tried to do something as honestly as possible. Sitting from the stone, from where I like to draw, with that same attitude.

 

How do you imagine a world governed by women?

If the world was ruled by women, I think we would have avoided all the bloodshed in the Ukrainian war. And now in Gaza. Perhaps the current would have been different, but we would have avoided that massacre, for sure.

 

The process of creating the film has been seen in a recent exhibition at Tabakalera in San Sebastián and, in a small format, it can also be seen in Lleida coinciding with Animac, what will the visitor find?

Whoever visits the exhibition will find material that will allow them to get into the film and empathize with it more. It will give you access to that universe and participate more in the film. You will find everything that the creative process of the film entailed, originals, cutouts, all handmade.

 

You combine your role as an animation director with that of a teacher as a senior professor of animation at (KHM) Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Germany, and also in other countries such as India or China. With your experience and direct contact with animation students, how do you see the future of animated film in terms of themes and techniques?

In terms of topics, I see a great future because younger people are very aware of different areas. In addition, they are very well trained and have judgment and great analytical skills. Regarding techniques, it is a mystery. Everything that is Unreal Engine (real-time animation) and recreation of spaces is increasingly faster. It is very complex, as is the way of counting, since there is more interaction. Technology is advancing a lot and animation is a technique that feeds on it. So anything is going to be possible.

 

What is your next professional challenge?

What I want to do now are characters. I have characters that emerged a thousand years ago, that have always existed and that I want to develop something with them, although for now there are no great stories in my head. Now I want to enjoy this moment and accompany the film.

 

 

Interview for the DIS cultural supplement of January 27, 2024.