Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña | Chile 2018, 75m |
8:15pm, Wednesday 25 July | New Farm Cinemas
Here, sometimes reminiscent of an Eraserhead-style Lynchian nightmare turned into sculpture, paintings and stop-motion, beasts become human, a body forms out of a head like something out of science fiction, and inside every constrained girl is an eager bird desperate to fly free.
– Sarah Ward, Screen
In the 1950s, German emigrants established an isolated colony, Colonia Dignidad, in the wilds of Chile. Ostensibly a charitable organisation—its full name Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad translates as the Dignity Charitable and Educational Society—under the rule of Paul Schäfer, it became a cult, indoctrinating and abusing its children while gaining support from the then Chilean government by becoming a torture camp for the repressive Pinochet regime.
Artists Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cocińa engage with this trauma through intertwining folk and fairytales as a young girl tries to escape. Created through stop-animation, The Wolf House is an astonishing achievement that mingles dreams and reality in a permanent flux. Possibly inspired by other artists as Jan Švankmajer, William Kentridge, and Jeff Keens, in their merger of real space and animation, The Wolf House, with its papier-mâché sculptures and animated paintings drifting across the walls of the House, is something new. Not just in stop-animation, but in cinema.
Courtesy of Diluvio
Spanish and German with English subtitles Unrated 15+