VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

In the last decade, the animation films of Portuguese directors Doutel and Sá have been touring the festival circuit gathering much acclaim. Those films map a disappearing landscape of life endured in small, isolated villages and invite us to witness the painful echo of dwindling communities and forgotten social routines; characters who appear trapped inland and far from the big city, struggling to maintain slowly declining professions, burdened by memories of lost family members and, ultimately, embodying modes of living destined to vanish, as society shifts inexorably towards urban life and the digital domain. Rather than yet another variation on the animation-documentary trend, these films are arguably an expression of animation as socio/ethnographic representation, highlighting issues of cultural and spatial identity. Although eminently Portuguese, these shorts appeal to a larger audience (as their international prizes confirm), reflecting upon issues of desertification and of cultural erasure (that echo Klein’s text on the erasure of Los Angeles (1) and how he relates this to his own animation research (2)). Together with the landscapes of other Portuguese animation films, this presentation will trace a poetic outline of Portugal’s interior and propose animation as a tool to reflect on issues of cultural and social identity. (3) (1) Klein (1997, 2008), The history of forgetting, Los Angeles and the erasure of memory (2) Klein (1993), 7 minutes, the life and death of the American animated cartoon (3) Batkin (2017), Identity in animation, a journey into self…