Isabel Herguera

Isabel Herguera (San Sebastián, 1961), visual artist, director, producer and animation film teacher with a long international career, and a great expert on Animac, since she was the director from 2003 to 2011.

Animated film director with international training and professional experience, Isabel Herguera graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country, continued her studies at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf as student of the video artist Nam June Paik, and completed her training with a master’s degree at the California Institute of the Arts, CalArts, in Los Angeles.

From 1990 to 2003 she lived in Los Angeles where she worked as an animator for Acme Filmworks, Klasky Csupo and for directors such as Maureen Selwood, Raimund Krumme and Sue Laughlin or Paul Vester, and collaborated on music videos like All around the world by Oasis (1997) or Sting’s Interactive Cd Rom All this Time (1996). In 1996 she set up Loko Pictures, an animation studio where she produced and directed work for clients such as Philip Morris, FOX, Procter and Gamble and HBO, among others.

In 2003 she returned to Europe to direct Animac and coordinate the Arteleku Moving Image Laboratory in San Sebastián. During these years she made several short films such as “La gallina ciega” (Spain, 2005); “Ámár” (Spain, 2010); “Bajo la almohada” (Spain, 2012); “Amore  d’inverno” (2014), “Kutxa beltza” (Spain, 2016); “La mujer ilustrada” (Spain, 2023) and she produces “Berbaoc” (Spain, 2007) and “Sailor’s Grave” (Spain, Colombia, China, Oman, 2014). In 2023 she directs “Sultana’s Dream” (Spain, Germany, 2023), her first feature film.

Currently, Herguera combines her cinematographic work with her work as an animation professor at the Kunsthochschule für Median in Cologne (Germany).