|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The first known Portuguese animation film was released on January 25, 1923. The Nightmare of António Maria, a short animated by Joaquim Guerreiro, was a simple black pencil-drawn satire of Portuguese Prime Minister António Maria da Silva.
Fittingly, just over a century later, Portuguese animation is getting the spotlight at this year’s Annecy International Animation Festival. This might have seemed inconceivable at the end of the 20th century, but during the last few decades Portuguese animation has developed and grown enormously, led by the acclaimed voices of Abi Feijó (The Outlaws), Regina Pessoa (Tragic Story with Happy Ending), Pedro Serrazina (Tale About the Cat and the Moon), Laura Gonçalves (The Garbage Man), Alexandra Ramires (Tie), David Doutel and Vasco Sá (Garrano), José Miguel Ribeiro (Nayola) and 2023 Oscar nominee João Gonzalez (Ice Merchants).
Planting the Seeds
Between the 1920s and 1970s, there were a smattering of films and animators, but there was no real sense of an animation community. By the 1970s, the generation that started in the 1940s and included Tope Filmes (Artur Correia and Ricardo Neto), Optical Print (Mário Neves, and later his son, Mário Jorge) and Servais Tiago were primarily doing poor Disney impersonations.
Nevertheless, these pioneers planted the seeds of animation in Portugal and were strong supporters of the first animation festival in the country, Cinanima. The festival, in turn, generated interest in animation as an art form and paved the way for what would become an internationally acclaimed studio, Filmógrafo.
And indeed, one of the key figures in the growth of Portuguese animation during the last few decades is undeniably animator and producer Abi Feijó.
Birth of Cinanima
Cinanima was founded in 1977. As with many festivals and organizations, the festival emerged because of an informal but passionate group of cinephiles. The emergence of Cinanima energized many, including the then-young art student Feijó. He went to every film screening at the first Cinanima and was surprised to discover that animation could be more than just gags. He was instantly addicted.
Since there were no animation schools or classes in Portugal at the time, the only way to learn about animation was through workshops. During the second Cinanima festival, there was an animation workshop led by Gaston Roch and Le Collodium Humide (from Avignon, France). Feijó signed up and, in these workshops, learned the basics of cinema and animation. In 1984, he was accepted for a five-month training program at the National Film Board of Canada. Under the direction of Canadian animator Pierre Hébert, Feijó made his first film, Oh Que Calma (1985).
When Feijó returned to Portugal in 1985, little had changed. There were still no opportunities to study animation, let alone find a job. But the lack of production did not stop Feijó: “When I got back to Portugal, I gathered some friends I knew who were also interested in animation, and we tried to arrange the minimum conditions to do it.” In 1987, he started the studio Filmógrafo.
Meanwhile, Feijó and colleagues continued to organize animation workshops. These workshops were essential to the growth of animation in Portugal, and they also enabled Feijó and his colleagues to gain valuable teaching experience so they could share their knowledge with younger people and stimulate an interest in animation.
Before joining the E.U. in 1986, there had been no funding for short films of any kind. That all changed when money became available from such E.U. initiatives as the Cartoon Program. In response, the Portuguese Film Institute also started to finance short films, including animated ones. “I was lucky to be one of the first to be financed by The Outlaws,” says Feijó. “The success this film earned proved we could do important work, and so animation started to be financed separately on a specific call. During the entire 1990s, there was a constant increase in the money invested in short animation films, and at the end of the millennium we had a very good ‘crop’ of films.”
After completing The Outlaws, Filmógrafo started an international training co-production program with a French studio, Lazennec Bretagne. The program provided six Portuguese and six French students with nine months of training. The students then paired up and produced a film. Three of the workshop’s students were Pedro Serrazina, Regina Pessoa and José Miguel Ribeiro (who made his acclaimed film The Suspect after the training).
Pedro Serrazina started at Filmógrafo during this training program. He was given some training on the rostrum camera and, in turn, shot virtually all of The Outlaws and worked as a cameraman on other productions. In 1996, he made his first film, Tale About the Cat and the Moon.
“We were just extremely happy that we could make our living doing animation,” says Serrazina. “This was a luxury, especially for me, who was coming from architecture and not really happy at the time and looking for something new. It was the start. The Outlaws was the opening of this idea that we could do short films, and then when Cat was selected for Cannes, it made people aware that we could do this and that it was viable.”
Regina Pessoa arrived around the same time as Serrazina, and she also contributed to The Outlaws, creating some drawings and most of the animation of the police inspector character. She then joined the Lazennec-Filmógrafo training and, during the workshops, developed the idea for her film, The Night.
‘We really wanted to express personal stories and bring our respective backgrounds together. We were just extremely happy that we could make our living doing animation.’
— Pedro Serrazina
Pessoa remembers the moment when the animation bug bit her. She’d just completed some in-between drawings for two main characters from The Outlaws. When she finished, she gave the drawings to Feijó. “He closed himself in the little dark windowless room where the camera was and eventually emerged with a strip of still-damp 16mm film,” recalls Pessoa. “Placing it on a projector that was in a corner of the room very close to the wall. Then, wonder, magic and astonishment! The laughing characters I had drawn appeared in a square of light on the wall, alive and forever laughing! And I could have stayed there watching forever, too.”
From there, the Portuguese animation community slowly started to grow and flourish. “One of the major influences was the introduction of animation courses at a few schools,” says Feijó.
“We didn’t have universities or places to learn,” adds Serrazina. “We learned on the spot, which was actually great. This idea of editing and working with the material was important to all of us because we all came from other areas. There was a need to share stories through the medium of animation. After that, universities and courses appeared, along with more festivals. There was really that possibility of doing this as a job.”
The increase in interest led to the birth of more animation studios. Says Feijó, “In 2000, there were three main studios: Filmógrafo, Zeppelin and Animanostra. But today there are many more, including: Ciclope, Filmes da Praça, Bando à Parte/BaP, Sardinha em Lata, Cola, Animais, AIM…”
“I entered as an intern in a studio and after got invited to stay and work professionally on other films,” says Laura Gonçalves, one of the co-founders of the BAP Animation Studio, whose film The Garbage Man took the Grand Prize at the 2022 Animafest Zagreb. “Now that there are more studios run by the younger generation, this also helps to develop the skills of those who graduate. But it is still very hard in Portugal to make a living from animation work if you don’t also do commercial jobs. We get to do it at BAP; we have survived working on authorial films only, but in a very specific environment, because we were able to create stability within our own group of people based on the financial support of the films.”
The landscape has also changed in terms of formats. Until the 21st century, animated short films were the primary vehicle of expression, but that has changed according to Serrazina: “I think the young animators want to do other things besides short films, from games to online content, etc., so the perspective has changed.”
Winds of Change
And that shifting perspective also is reflected in mindsets and backgrounds. Before, say, the 1990s, there weren’t a heck of a lot of animation schools. That changed in the late 1990s, and there’s been this explosion in schools and new talents. That has affected animation in a different and unexpected way. Many animators before that time (and we can go back in animation history and list endless examples) were self-taught and often came from totally different backgrounds. Most had not dreamed of being animators.
“I think that the most fun and interesting thing about animation is the background of the artists,” adds Gonçalves. “Many have come from diverse backgrounds (sciences, painting, cinema, sculpture, photography, music, etc.). This richness of diverse points of view and ways of making films brings something else to the films that the school that specializes in animation doesn’t always have, in my opinion.”
‘I think that the most fun and interesting thing about animation is the diverse background of the artists.’
— Laura Gonçalves
Serrazina also feels there’s been a change in mindset since he began in animation. “In the past, you had me coming from architecture and Regina and José Miguel coming from fine arts. We were really the first three. We really wanted to express personal stories and bring our respective backgrounds together. These days, they go straight into animation, and I feel there is sometimes a different approach in which animation is a visual medium they want to explore and use as a career. Not many of them come with a firm intention of expressing themselves. They learn how to bring movement to things. We wanted to bring stories and our past experiences into animation. It doesn’t mean it’s better or worse; it’s just different. It’s very healthy.”
“Animation was the first place I felt good,” says Pessoa. “It was also getting to know Abi and this strong community spirit from the studio. It was so different from the experience from fine arts school, where I felt teachers’ sterile coldness and where a certain cruel and elitist rivalry was cultivated. In the studio, we were all nice, harmless misfits.”
Portugal’s animated past, present and future are celebrated over seven programs (curated by Monstra’s director, Fernando Galrito) during Annecy Festival 2024.
Chris Robinson is a writer and artistic director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF). Robinson has authored thirteen books including Between Genius and Utter Illiteracy: A Story of Estonian Animation (2006), Ballad of a Thin Man: In Search of Ryan Larkin (2008), and Japanese Animation: Time Out of Mind (2010). He also wrote the screenplay for the award-winning short, Lipsett Diaries.
