ACTIVIDADES MÁS IMPORTANTES

In 1916 producer Federico Valle wanted a one-minute political satire drawn for his news- reel in Argentina, so he hired twenty-year-old Quirino Cristiani, a caricaturist, to do the job. It was so successful that Valle made a full-length political satire El Apóstoland released it

in 1917. Alfonso de Laferrère wrote the text of this first animated feature made anywhere. Cristiani made more films, including Peludópolis, the world’s first animated sound feature,

released in 1931. Andrés Ducaud made other films for Valle. Both Juan Oliva and Dante Quinterno produced animation with limited success in the 1930s and 1940s. José M. Burone Bruché made films in the 1940s; Victor Iturralde Rúa, José Arcuri, and Rodolfo Julio Bardi made avant-garde films in the 1950s; and Carlos Gonzáles Groppa made puppet films. In the 1960s and 1970s as many as 450 animated advertising minutes were produced a year in Argentina. Then animator Manuel García founded a publishing and TV production empire in the 1960s, producing many animated TV series. In the 1970s Jorge “Catú” Martin directed more than 200 animated shorts. And the Patagonik Film Group in Buenos Aires produced the film Patoruzito, distributed in 2004.

In Chile Grafilms was founded in 1978 by Alvaro Arce and Enrique Bustamante. The company made miniseries and commercials and trained a generation of animators until 1984. Cineanimadores produced the first Chilean animated feature film,Ogu y Mampato en Rapa Nui, released in 2002. At Arce Studios and EMU Films Alvaro Arce and Ricardo

35

1990

Beauty and the Beast, the first animated feature to be nominated for an Academy Award, is released.

Amunategui released another feature,Cesante, in 2003. ChileAnimación, a service studio,

produced animation for U.S.TV. Independents Vivienne Barry (Nostalgias de Dresden, 1990)

and Thomas Wells made shorts.A free trade agreement between Chile and the United States was signed in 2003.

The first Brazilian animated film was O Kaiserby caricaturist Seth (Álvaro Marins) in

1916. It was followed by a second film almost right away, but the only animation produced for many years thereafter was advertising. During the 1930s and 1940s several animators made short films. Anélio Latini Filho animated the first Brazilian feature in 1953:Sinfônia amazônica. He learned animation by reading manuals and watching North American films.

Avant-garde artists Roberto Miller, Rubens Francisco Lucchetti, and Bassano Vaccarini made films influenced by Norman McLaren in the 1950s. Yppe Nakashima produced the TV series Papa Papo and some shorts in the 1950s, followed by the animated feature As avênturas de Piconzé, made in collaboration with João Luiz Araújo and Sylvio Renoldi in

1972. The young artists of the Cêntro de Estudos do Cinêma de Animação and Fotogramas produced more shorts during the late 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s Ernesto Stilpen, Antônio Moreno, and Marcos Magalhães won awards with their films. About the same time the comic strip artist Maurício De Sôusa produced animated TV shorts and features about his characters, Mônica, Magali, and their friends. In Brazil the Anima Mundi animation fes- tival brought in animators from around the world.

Cora Film opened an animation department for advertising in Bogotá, Colombia, in the 1960s. Nelson Ramirez at Producciones was a pioneer in Colombian character animation. (Shorts are a Colombian staple.) Cartoonist Ernesto Franco and animator Luis Enrique Castillo made shorts first, and later, in the 1980s, Philip and Magdalena Massonat and Carlos Eduardo Santa also made them. Animator Fernando Laverde made puppet shorts and a feature La pobre viejecitain the 1970s and then his most famous film,Martin Fierro(1988),

made in co-production with animators in Argentina and Cuba. Studios like LEPIXMA and Toonka Films made shorts shown in festivals and created animation for TV. Younger ani- mators like Miguel Alejandro Bohórquez Nates returned to the Colombian staple, making shorts for the Internet.

Cartoonist Manuel Alonso fathered Cuban animation with his short Napoleón, el faraón de los sinsabores in 1937. In Santiago de Cuba a group led by César Cruz Barrios was

founded, and they made the first Cuban color short El hijo de la ciencia (1947).In 1959, after

the Cuban revolution, an animation division was founded in the new Instituto Cubano de Arte y Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) and led by Jesús de Armas. The films produced were mainly social and political. The mid-1960s saw the output of mostly educational films, but Luis Rogelio Nogueras produced a pacifist film, and Hernán Henríquez adapted a folk- tale. The ICAIC was restructured in the 1970s to produce films for children, fantasy films with little dialogue for the youngest, and action and adventure for those eight to fourteen. In the 1980s animators began to make films for adults with more experimentation in style. Important Cuban animators include Tulio Raggi, Mario Rivas, and Juan Padrón.

Mexican animation first became popular in the 1940s. Caricolor and Cinemuñecos were founded. Animators like Ernesto Terrazas, Rodolfo Zamora, and Ernesto López worked in the 1950s at a company started by R. K. Thompkins. Later they moved to Gamma Pro-

ducciones. Television provided work for new companies like the Canto brothers’ Produc- ciones Kinema, Harvey Siegel’s Caleidoscopio, and the companies founded by Daniel Burgos and Dan McManus. Important animators in the 1970s and 1980s include Enrique Escalona (Tlacuilo) and Fernando Ruiz, who made Los tres reyes magos(1976), the first

Mexican feature. Magos y Gigantes (2003) from Anima Studios was the first fully digital

animated film from Mexico.

Globalization

Some animators worked internationally. Lotte Reiniger continued to make films in Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and Canada into the 1970s. Berthoid Bartosch made films in Vienna, Berlin, and France. George Pal, a Hungarian, worked in Berlin at UFA, in the Netherlands, and in the United States, where he was known for his outstanding Puppetoons

and his expertise in special effects. Oskar Fischinger made films in Germany and the United States. His films were abstract art linked to music, and it was his work that inspired portions of Disney’s Fantasia. Born in Russia,Alexandre Alexeïeff made haunting, experimental films

with Claire Parker, working in France, Canada, and the United States. Alexeïeff is known especially for his pinscreen films. His masterpiece was A Night on Bald Mountain.Norman

McLaren was another international animator, and in addition to his work with the National Film Board in Canada, he made nonobjective art films (like Blinkity Blank) in Scotland,

England, Canada, and the United States. Some of his films were painted directly on film stock. Animators now more than ever go where the work is, or they work in one country on their computer and deliver the work digitally anywhere in the world.

The world seems very small today. The invention of modern forms of transportation changed the way the average person lived and the way he thought. Until the early part of the twentieth century most people never ventured more than a few miles from home. Normal travel was determined by the distance one’s feet could walk or one’s horse could gallop. During World Wars I and II thousands of average men went around the world to fight and came home with a new perspective on life. Farm boys and girls moved to the big city. For many reasons people all over the world immigrated to new lands, and they’re still on the move. The advent of radio and television made us more aware of what others around the world were doing and thinking. It is now very common to vacation in other lands. Phones and the Internet allow us to communicate on a daily basis with anyone, anywhere. Satellites deliver media from around the world. It’s impossible for almost anyone to remain unchanged by cultural influences from other lands. Big corporations do business internationally. The products and services of each country must be able to compete with the products and ser- vices of companies around the world. Many countries have sponsored animation companies directly; others give incentives or large tax credits for employing workers from their own country. Companies in countries that don’t have access to this kind of help from their gov- ernments find it hard to compete.When something affects the economy of one country, those changes affect economies around the world. In a very short time the world has seen huge changes because of globalization. For good or for bad, we will never be the same.

37

2002

Shrekwins the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Exercises

1. Pick an individual or studio and do more research in the library or on the Internet. 2. Choose a location or a time period, and do more research in this area. You might want

to research some areas that this history was unable to cover. 3. Research the history of animated video games.

4. Watch an old animated cartoon or feature film. How is it different from current animation?

5. How does animation history relate to you? Does it let you understand the animation industry better? Does it inspire you to see some old films? Does it give you any ideas about what you personally want to do?

6. Were writers important to early animated films? Explain. Are they important to most animation today? Why? Discuss this in class.

7. In what ways has technology influenced animation?

8. Who and what do you think are the important influences on animation today? Discuss. 9. Write a short animation script using information from this chapter. Will you stick to the facts and write something educational? Or will you use the facts as a starting place for a fictional story? You may need to do more research before you begin.

10. Can you think of a way to make animated films that wasn’t discussed here? 11. Do research that will help you in making a student film.

C H A P T E R

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