As Brazil falls heedlessly into far-right political clutches, the liberal message of Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar and André Catoto’s ravishing animated feature “Tito and the Birds” turns out to be more unhappily timely than its makers would have hoped: Put simply, a society gripped by fear will never take flight. If the boy-against-the-world allegory carrying this moral is painted with a broad brush, so — often quite literally — is the film itself. Employing a darkly iridescent fusion of oil paint and digital embellishment, it renders a growing dystopia in shifting, seasick colors, distorted into about as much exquisite, Expressionist-inspired nightmare fuel as its family-film remit will allow.
A classy acquisition for newbie distributors Shout! Studios, this Annecy and Toronto premiere is among the 25 titles submitted in this year’s animated feature Oscar race. Comparisons to fellow Brazilian dazzler “Boy and the World,” a surprise 2015 nominee, are both obvious and merited,...
A classy acquisition for newbie distributors Shout! Studios, this Annecy and Toronto premiere is among the 25 titles submitted in this year’s animated feature Oscar race. Comparisons to fellow Brazilian dazzler “Boy and the World,” a surprise 2015 nominee, are both obvious and merited,...
- 10/29/2018
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The Brazilian animated feature “Tito and the Birds,” which makes its North American premiere at Tiff, has been picked up for distribution by Shout! Studios (“Big Fish & Begonia”) for Oscar consideration.
This exquisite-looking movie, about a 10-year-old boy who saves the world from an epidemic of fear, was created by Split Studio in Brazil with oil paintings (like last year’s innovative “Loving Vincent”), digital drawings, and graphic animation.
“Tito and the Birds” was directed by animation newcomer Gustavo Steinberg (the live-action “End of the Line”), Gabriel Bitar (“Cidade Cinza”), and André Catoto (“Say I Am Only Seventeen”). In addition, it features an original score by Gustavo Kurlat and Binho Feffer (the Oscar-nominated “The Boy and the World”). The producers are Daniel Greco, Felipe Sabino, and Brenda Wooding.
“Tito and the Birds” tells the story of the titular boy and his two friends confronting a pandemic created by fear...
This exquisite-looking movie, about a 10-year-old boy who saves the world from an epidemic of fear, was created by Split Studio in Brazil with oil paintings (like last year’s innovative “Loving Vincent”), digital drawings, and graphic animation.
“Tito and the Birds” was directed by animation newcomer Gustavo Steinberg (the live-action “End of the Line”), Gabriel Bitar (“Cidade Cinza”), and André Catoto (“Say I Am Only Seventeen”). In addition, it features an original score by Gustavo Kurlat and Binho Feffer (the Oscar-nominated “The Boy and the World”). The producers are Daniel Greco, Felipe Sabino, and Brenda Wooding.
“Tito and the Birds” tells the story of the titular boy and his two friends confronting a pandemic created by fear...
- 8/22/2018
- by Bill Desowitz
- Indiewire
One of movie fans favorite events of Oscar Week was held Thursday evening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, as the Academy held the eighth annual event celebrating the nominees for Best Animated Feature Film.
The evening featured clips from each film, followed by an onstage discussion with each group of nominated filmmakers.
This year’s eclectic mix – Anomalisa, Boy and the World, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie and When Marnie Was There – are as international as they are distinct.
Employing a stunning variety of animation techniques, the nominees explored a wide range of topics, including existential despair, devastation of natural resources, learning to handle emotion, the value of friendship and surviving the difficulties of adolescence.
This year, members were able to stream the movies and voting came from all over the world.
The evening’s hosts were Don Hall, Chris Williams, Roy Conli, last year’s Oscar winning team from Big Hero 6.
The evening featured clips from each film, followed by an onstage discussion with each group of nominated filmmakers.
This year’s eclectic mix – Anomalisa, Boy and the World, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie and When Marnie Was There – are as international as they are distinct.
Employing a stunning variety of animation techniques, the nominees explored a wide range of topics, including existential despair, devastation of natural resources, learning to handle emotion, the value of friendship and surviving the difficulties of adolescence.
This year, members were able to stream the movies and voting came from all over the world.
The evening’s hosts were Don Hall, Chris Williams, Roy Conli, last year’s Oscar winning team from Big Hero 6.
- 2/26/2016
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
How "Boy and the World" Director Alê Abreu Handcrafted His Heartfelt & Dazzling Animated Masterpiece
"Boy and the World" is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Animated Feature and it opens on December 11 in L.A. at Laemmle's North Hollywood and in NYC at IFC Center
Textured dreams laced with thoughtful observations on the modern human experience construct Alê Abreu’s stirring fantasia “Boy and the World,” a film so viscerally enchanting and dazzlingly beautiful that it enraptures you from the moment its subtle opening sequence appears on screen. A little boy leaves his home in the peaceful countryside to see the grandeur of urban civilization and find his beloved father, but as this musical odyssey exposes him to both unimaginable desolation and mesmerizing beauty, he finds comfort in endearing memories and future hopes.
This Brazilian animated feature showcases handcraft in a uniquely imaginative manner that resembles the simple magic that could come from a child’s imagination. Colorful backgrounds with eclectic aesthetics and an adorable protagonist serve as the vehicle for Abreu to discuss complex subjects like consumerism, oppression, discrimination, and poverty. It’s all as clever as it’s charming, and it's by far the best and most sophisticated animated film to hit cinemas stateside this year.
Chatting with Abreu is as delightful as watching the film itself. His ever-present fervor for the animation medium and its yet unexplored possibilities is contagious. While he is fully aware of the uphill battle that a film like his faces in a cinematic landscape saturated by commercially-friendly product often devoid of any meaningful artistry. Yet, Abreu remains enthusiastically focused on the boundless creative freedom that working outside the preset productions models allows him.
A film like “Boy and the World” could only come from the intersection between meticulous handcraft and sheer kindness. Alê Abreu will tell you that his film came from a personal place to express his passion to explore what it means to be a human being. I believe him, because every brush stroke, pencil drawing, and colorful design shines with a glossy coat of loving warmth.
Review: Why Alê Abreu's Sublime 'Boy and the World' is the Best Animated Film of the Year
Carlos Aguilar: This is your second feature film and it's stylistically very different from what you've done previously. The designs and lyrical quality of the animation is remarkable and it brilliantly evokes innocence and wonder. Where did the concept for "Boy and the World" and its adorable protagonist come from?
Alê Abreu: I have the feeling that I didn’t make it by myself, but that I was conducted by feelings that were completely different from those in my previous work. When I start making a film I don’t know what I’m doing. I made this film without knowing what I was doing. I simply found the character in a sketchbook. I had drawn it some time before. There were many drawings from the research I did for the film “Canto Latino,” the animadoc or animated documentary about Latin America. I did a lot research about protest music from the 60s and 70s, and I think that’s what guided me to the story of this boy. One day I discovered the figure of this boy in those research notebooks. I felt like this boy was calling me to follow him into this world and to discover his story. I was very happy to hear the little boy’s voice. He was really the director of the film.
Making a film from the point of view of a young boy’s eyes opened the door to another universe with lots of freedom and to explore a new dimension. This was achieved as I started doing things that were close to what exists in a child’s universe. I built the film this way. I gathered all the tools I usually use such as brushes, color pencils, crayons, watercolors, and everything else I found in my studio, and I put them on top of a table. I had this feeling of freedom and possibility like if I was this boy. I was using the boy’s freedom to create this film.
CA: In a sense you created a film from this boy's perspective and how he would tell this story.
Alê Abreu: I tried to exploit such freedom to create those drawings like if I was a boy. I tried to draw with that freedom and that love that I remember from being a child and spending a day drawing without worrying about whether what I’m drawing is real or strange. I’m being sincere and I’m being human. I’m making mistakes or I’m doing things correctly, but I’m being human regardless. I’m talking about my pain and my joy, and I’m not saying it with words but mainly with colors and shapes. That’s what I tried to do with the utmost sincerity and humility of a child.
CA: For an independent production like this, how difficult was it to achieve the desired look and how big was your team of collaborators during this process?
Alê Abreu: Our team was very small during these three years of work. There were about 15 people helping me, but I produced all the animations and backgrounds myself. We had to discover our own production process. From what type of software could help us make a movie faster to everything else regarding the textures. Some might think, ”It’s probably very easy to make a film with those textures,” but it’s much more difficult than what it appears to be. We had to discover a faster process because otherwise it could have taken us 10 years to make it.
CA: This is definitely a work of love. Is the film entirely hand-drawn or how how big was the role of modern technology in its production?
Alê Abreu: A little bit more than 50% of what you see on screen is handcrafted and the other 50% was about emulating these textures on the computer. However, for us, when we were making it, we had to believe it was all handcrafted. I always told my team, “You have to believe that you are not in front of a computer, but that your canvas is a piece of paper. You have to believe this even if you have a computer in front of you.”
CA: Tell me about selecting the diverse musical pieces that score the film. There are multiple genres from rap to samba, but they all seamlessly connect with the images.
Alê Abreu: That was a very natural process because as I was creating the animatic I added music clips as reference of the kind of music I wanted in the film. These were from musicians like Naná Vasconcelos and Barbatuques, the body percussion group. Nana Vasconcelos was called because his music speaks to the point of view of the older man in the film. The rapper Emicida came on board at the end of the entire process when we started thinking about what we could play as the final credits rolled. We thought that using rap would draw a parallel with the protest music from the 60s and 70s that we found through the research for animadoc. When we thought about rap, Emicida immediately came to mind and we decided to call him to create this song bring the audience back to earth and put their feet on the ground. Emicida’s song is the only one that has lyrics in actual understandable Portuguese.
CA: Do you believe that you were thinking musically while making the film? It clearly feels as if music becomes a unique and alive element in the film.
Alê Abreu: Is as if the music is another character or as if it was a part of this great opera. I also through about this project as a structure or as a sculpture made out of colors, rhythm, characters, and brush strokes, but with every single one of these always supporting one another. If I have a blank piece of paper and I draw a red figure, immediately this brings sounds and shapes to my mind. I tried to make a film in which every component supports the others while giving each other space and stimulating the creation of what’s yet to come.
CA: One song in particular stands out, “Airgela,” which we hear throughout the film in very distinct version. This song connects the boy with the his father, with his memories, and with the world beyond his hometown.
Alê Abreu: “Airgela” is “Alegria” backwards and “Alegria” means “Joy” or “Happiness.” This is a fundamental word in this film. It’s very important. Symbolically “Alegria” is crucial word in the creation of this project. Although it wasn’t present from the beginning, as we were working on the music it became symbolic.
CA: Why did it become symbolic?
Alê Abreu: Because I feel that joy is the basic emotion of life and of human beings. It’s what supports everything. We are here to be happy. We are to enjoy “alegria.”
CA: We are born happy and full of joy, sadness and all other emotions come after.
Alê Abreu: Absolutely. “Alegria” is the first word in that song, but then there are seven other words. The first one is “Alegria” and the last one is “Voz” or “Voice.” You start with “Alegria,“ then “Libertad,” or "Freedom" and then other words until you have a “Voice.” You depart from joy until you get a voice. These seven words were carefully selected for the song, which was written by Gustavo Kurlat, one of the film's composers.
CA: The dialogue we hear in the film is a language you created by assembling sentences using Portuguese words written backwards. This also applies to any billboards or signs in the film. Why was the lack of understandable spoken and written language important to you? Even without a single word you manage to express very complex ideas about the world and how it works.
Alê Abreu: The entire time I was following the feelings experienced by children, so the feeling of not understanding what adults say was very important to put the audience in this frequency to understand the world through his eyes. We discovered this halfway through the process. When we started making the film there were some lines of dialogue in Portuguese, but we then changed our minds. The film started from very specific issues in the world, in particular Latin America, but halfway through the journey we felt the necessity to have more universal ideas that were not so specific. They didn’t need to be specifically South American or Latin American. Instead we discovered we were talking about human beings in general. We realized that these are not issues only pertinent to Latin America: poverty, misery, consumerism, etc.
The world’s geography is not realistic. Geography is not real. Borders are only closed to people but they are open to products. There is another type of geography outside of this matrix. Because of this we noticed we were talking about much more than just Latin America. That was very important to put the film on another level. Based on this idea, we knew that we were not in this world any longer. We were in another planet and we were reaching for something closer to a fable. It was something fabulous. I started looking at the film as if it happened in another planet and that allowed me even more freedom.
Looking through a child’s eyes and knowing this was another planet, we decided to design the machines with eyes and bodies like animals, we also decided that this planet has two moons, and we decided that anything else we wanted to do was allowed. It was a new perspective to make the film. That’s when I thought, “I don’t need these few dialogue lines in Portuguese. What are we going to do? We are going to create a language in which the words are pronounced backwards and we are going to put subtitles on the screen.” Then we realized it wasn’t necessary to put them. There is no reason to understand what they are saying. Each person can understand it however they like.
CA: There were no limitations
Alê Abreu: No. We were breaking away from anything that linked us to this world, but by doing that those ideas remained even stronger. Fables represent the basis for what I wanted to say about human beings.
CA: This idea of machines replacing the human touch in almost all endeavors also speaks to the way animation is being produced today. Digitally made films with very specific financial purposes have taken over market leaving little room for handcrafted works.
Alê Abreu: On another level this film talks about that. We had tremendous freedom while making this film. We never thought about marketing. It wasn’t a film made to sell merchandise or products or to reach millions of people around the world. It was a film made to say what I really felt. It’s a film made in a very radical creative manner. It was possible because we didn’t have to pander to capitalism. I think the film is also a humanistic cry for help for animation. It’s a film with sensitivities completely opposite to what the market wants to sell.
CA: Since those films are designed for mass appeal they take very few risks regarding the ideas or issues they deal with. It's hard to imagine a studio animated feature tackling the social justice concerns "Boy and the World" touches on.
Alê Abreu: The film gave me the possibility to create a new language. Animation is a very rich medium but hasn’t fully been exploited by artists. Often artists are trapped by words. Films are born from screenplays and they are guided by words. They are born very limited and there is no space for real creation: graphic creation, pictorial creation, or audiovisual creation. If we really want to use the art of animation with all its strength, we have to rethink the processes by which it’s made because the medium is the message. The way a film is made tells you about its message. The processes are the same as the products. We made the film starting from processes that allowed us to find these complex ideas. Director and producers have to take all the risks they can. We developed this film with the possibility to create departing from a blank page and to discover things as the process went along and as we understood the things that at first we couldn’t understand in words.
CA: Would you say that everything, even challenging political concepts, can be expressed truly visually without the need for words?
Alê Abreu: I think so, but each film has its processes. It doesn’t mean that all animated films have to be like “Boy and the World,” but creators have to have total freedom. There are films that are born with the purpose to sell. They are still admirable films with great artists and great visuals, but we wanted to use a more radical approach to create art. That’s what we tried to do.
CA: "Boy and the World" deals with our childhood memories and what we learn as we grow older and face the powers that rule our lives. Did you ever consider what elements of the film would appeal to younger viewers and which ideas would be better understood by adults? Sadly, we tend to underestimate how sophisticated young audiences can be.
Alê Abreu: During the entire process of making this film I never thought about whom I was making it for. I always thought that the film was for me, but I didn’t think of any of that. I just did what I thought I had to do. I didn’t think, “This is what children are going to think” or “This is what adults will understand.” At the end of the process we called a market research company to find out whom the film was for or what was the target audience. We didn’t have a lot of money to release the film, so in order for it to play in cinemas, which are dominated by films with much larger marketing budgets, we had to discover whom the film was for.
We hired this company and we rented a theater in a multiplex for 200 people. The first time the film was screened I was hidden, but part of my team was in the audience. There were a lot of kids and I was very nervous, but on this day I discovered the film spoke to everyone. After the screening there was a Q&A. There were people asking questions and we had a sort of debate. An adult said that he hadn’t understood the relationship between the three characters and a child raised his hand to explain it to him. At that moment I understood it wasn’t a film for children or for adults, but for everyone. It’s a very universal film.
Following this screening there was only one thing I changed because at the end of the film I felt a profound sadness. In there first version, where we now have a colorful village with a new musical bird emerging and this small band of children, there was instead a sequence were garbage from the city engulfed the boy’s house and his tree and there was a shot of all the things inside the house destroyed. It was very heavy. It didn’t have a glimpse of hope. I understood that the film was a beautiful piece of music but at that point it ended in a low note. I had to bring that final note higher.
We went back to the studio and I didn’t sleep for two or three nights until my assistant director told me to think about the small children band, which represents the new generation, but he suggested adding it during the credits. It was too much jumping around. We then experimented with other possibilities. We added the band, we eliminated the garbage, and we added this new village developing. When we saw it was like a completely nee film. At that moment I had the feeling that the film was finally done.
CA: Music takes on physical form in the film. Each note becomes a colorful floating sphere that belongs to a greater whole - the bird. How did this peculiar and poignant storytelling device originate?
Alê Abreu: I’m not sure. In one of those sketchbooks I used while doing the research for “Canto Latino,” there was a drawing of this boy with these colorful spheres around him that I had drawn, but at that point I didn’t know what they meant. My job was like that of a detective looking to make sense out things that I had felt and drawn before. The drawing precedes the explanation. The film was born out of sensations transformed into graphic images and then I tried to make poetic sense of them. For example if you give me three words I’ll try to make a poem with only those three words. You can write any words, but the meaning you are going to give these words comes from what you are feeling. The creative process happened that way.
I draw things on the paper very freely but believing there is meaning to them already. There is already meaning in the colors, I don’t need to be guided by words. I draw them and the meaning comes after. Every time we would start a new sequence we would change everything. We had 40 sequences in the film and for me a sequence in a film is like a phrase in a poem. We were trying to understand what each sequence meant in two or three words. We had a film with 40 lines, some stanzas, and some words.
CA: There is a moment in the film where the animated realm gives in to the destruction taking place in the real world. Fire comes in an we are taken into live-action footage that shows our voracity against nature. Why did you feel it was necessary to include this powerful clip?
Alê Abreu: It’s very interesting because that has to do with the language that I mentioned. The film started with a blank page where we created a young boy with a simple pencil drawing and then the world opens itself up for the boy and at the same time we add the pastels, inks, watercolors, and many other elements. As the boy goes from the city and what’s more mundane back home, we started cutting newspapers and made a collage to create the mundane and artificial aspect that mankind had given to nature.
We put all these things on top the blank page, which represents where we come from and where are going. The film starts on a blank page and ends on a blank page. That blank space is the most abstract thing. When we are born the memories we have are from an abstract space. I think we don’t die, but we instead travel to an abstract space like a blank page.
I wanted to translate that anguish of this oppressive situation in an audiovisual way. We tried to do it with collages but it wasn’t enough. Since we continued to work as animators and as artist with the freedom of adding things we first thought collages could work, but we couldn’t do that there, so we decided to completely rip this dream apart and added the live-action. We had to break away from animation. Poetically speaking, if you eliminate the animation you eliminate dreams. Adding the live-action sequence was as if we had destroyed the fable to not dream anymore. There are not dreams, no animation, no characters, but only the sad truth of what we are living now.
CA: This sequence is a heart-wrenching call for action. It urges us to open our eyes and react
Alê Abreu: I tried to translate that into this language and in this audiovisual poem with all the mixture of elements. In the midst of this mixture of techniques what would symbolize breaking away from the dream was to cut the animation completely because animation is the glue that gives you all the freedom.
CA: Tell me about the reaction to the film in Brazil. "Boy and the World" has received international acclaim, it's won numerous awards, and has screened at countless festivals, but was the reception at home as great given that you had to compete with animated offers from abroad?
Alê Abreu: It wasn’t great. The critical reception was really good, but we didn’t find a commercial space to screen the film, only in art house cinemas. We opened in 35 theaters in the entire country and we had 35,000 attendees. However, in France we opened on 90 screens for 7 months and we had over 120,000 attendees. In France “Boy and the World” was one of the tree best reviewed films by critics that year. It was very special. For local films in countries like Brazil or Mexico establishing commercial relationships is not easy. It’s very difficult for independent local films, for our films. It’s like having a supermarket where there is no room on the shelves or the marquee for your product. The market is completely taken. It’s an economic issue, but above all it’s political. For me it’s very simple, there is no space on the marquee for our films. People go to the supermarket not knowing what they want. They go and see what’s there. The company offering the products is more important. If the films were there people would see them. If you have a product and there is space on the shelves for it, there is a chance people will buy it. Right now there are no spaces for our films in our countries.
"Boy and the World" opens on December 11 in L.A. at Laemmle's North Hollywood and in NYC at IFC Center...
Textured dreams laced with thoughtful observations on the modern human experience construct Alê Abreu’s stirring fantasia “Boy and the World,” a film so viscerally enchanting and dazzlingly beautiful that it enraptures you from the moment its subtle opening sequence appears on screen. A little boy leaves his home in the peaceful countryside to see the grandeur of urban civilization and find his beloved father, but as this musical odyssey exposes him to both unimaginable desolation and mesmerizing beauty, he finds comfort in endearing memories and future hopes.
This Brazilian animated feature showcases handcraft in a uniquely imaginative manner that resembles the simple magic that could come from a child’s imagination. Colorful backgrounds with eclectic aesthetics and an adorable protagonist serve as the vehicle for Abreu to discuss complex subjects like consumerism, oppression, discrimination, and poverty. It’s all as clever as it’s charming, and it's by far the best and most sophisticated animated film to hit cinemas stateside this year.
Chatting with Abreu is as delightful as watching the film itself. His ever-present fervor for the animation medium and its yet unexplored possibilities is contagious. While he is fully aware of the uphill battle that a film like his faces in a cinematic landscape saturated by commercially-friendly product often devoid of any meaningful artistry. Yet, Abreu remains enthusiastically focused on the boundless creative freedom that working outside the preset productions models allows him.
A film like “Boy and the World” could only come from the intersection between meticulous handcraft and sheer kindness. Alê Abreu will tell you that his film came from a personal place to express his passion to explore what it means to be a human being. I believe him, because every brush stroke, pencil drawing, and colorful design shines with a glossy coat of loving warmth.
Review: Why Alê Abreu's Sublime 'Boy and the World' is the Best Animated Film of the Year
Carlos Aguilar: This is your second feature film and it's stylistically very different from what you've done previously. The designs and lyrical quality of the animation is remarkable and it brilliantly evokes innocence and wonder. Where did the concept for "Boy and the World" and its adorable protagonist come from?
Alê Abreu: I have the feeling that I didn’t make it by myself, but that I was conducted by feelings that were completely different from those in my previous work. When I start making a film I don’t know what I’m doing. I made this film without knowing what I was doing. I simply found the character in a sketchbook. I had drawn it some time before. There were many drawings from the research I did for the film “Canto Latino,” the animadoc or animated documentary about Latin America. I did a lot research about protest music from the 60s and 70s, and I think that’s what guided me to the story of this boy. One day I discovered the figure of this boy in those research notebooks. I felt like this boy was calling me to follow him into this world and to discover his story. I was very happy to hear the little boy’s voice. He was really the director of the film.
Making a film from the point of view of a young boy’s eyes opened the door to another universe with lots of freedom and to explore a new dimension. This was achieved as I started doing things that were close to what exists in a child’s universe. I built the film this way. I gathered all the tools I usually use such as brushes, color pencils, crayons, watercolors, and everything else I found in my studio, and I put them on top of a table. I had this feeling of freedom and possibility like if I was this boy. I was using the boy’s freedom to create this film.
CA: In a sense you created a film from this boy's perspective and how he would tell this story.
Alê Abreu: I tried to exploit such freedom to create those drawings like if I was a boy. I tried to draw with that freedom and that love that I remember from being a child and spending a day drawing without worrying about whether what I’m drawing is real or strange. I’m being sincere and I’m being human. I’m making mistakes or I’m doing things correctly, but I’m being human regardless. I’m talking about my pain and my joy, and I’m not saying it with words but mainly with colors and shapes. That’s what I tried to do with the utmost sincerity and humility of a child.
CA: For an independent production like this, how difficult was it to achieve the desired look and how big was your team of collaborators during this process?
Alê Abreu: Our team was very small during these three years of work. There were about 15 people helping me, but I produced all the animations and backgrounds myself. We had to discover our own production process. From what type of software could help us make a movie faster to everything else regarding the textures. Some might think, ”It’s probably very easy to make a film with those textures,” but it’s much more difficult than what it appears to be. We had to discover a faster process because otherwise it could have taken us 10 years to make it.
CA: This is definitely a work of love. Is the film entirely hand-drawn or how how big was the role of modern technology in its production?
Alê Abreu: A little bit more than 50% of what you see on screen is handcrafted and the other 50% was about emulating these textures on the computer. However, for us, when we were making it, we had to believe it was all handcrafted. I always told my team, “You have to believe that you are not in front of a computer, but that your canvas is a piece of paper. You have to believe this even if you have a computer in front of you.”
CA: Tell me about selecting the diverse musical pieces that score the film. There are multiple genres from rap to samba, but they all seamlessly connect with the images.
Alê Abreu: That was a very natural process because as I was creating the animatic I added music clips as reference of the kind of music I wanted in the film. These were from musicians like Naná Vasconcelos and Barbatuques, the body percussion group. Nana Vasconcelos was called because his music speaks to the point of view of the older man in the film. The rapper Emicida came on board at the end of the entire process when we started thinking about what we could play as the final credits rolled. We thought that using rap would draw a parallel with the protest music from the 60s and 70s that we found through the research for animadoc. When we thought about rap, Emicida immediately came to mind and we decided to call him to create this song bring the audience back to earth and put their feet on the ground. Emicida’s song is the only one that has lyrics in actual understandable Portuguese.
CA: Do you believe that you were thinking musically while making the film? It clearly feels as if music becomes a unique and alive element in the film.
Alê Abreu: Is as if the music is another character or as if it was a part of this great opera. I also through about this project as a structure or as a sculpture made out of colors, rhythm, characters, and brush strokes, but with every single one of these always supporting one another. If I have a blank piece of paper and I draw a red figure, immediately this brings sounds and shapes to my mind. I tried to make a film in which every component supports the others while giving each other space and stimulating the creation of what’s yet to come.
CA: One song in particular stands out, “Airgela,” which we hear throughout the film in very distinct version. This song connects the boy with the his father, with his memories, and with the world beyond his hometown.
Alê Abreu: “Airgela” is “Alegria” backwards and “Alegria” means “Joy” or “Happiness.” This is a fundamental word in this film. It’s very important. Symbolically “Alegria” is crucial word in the creation of this project. Although it wasn’t present from the beginning, as we were working on the music it became symbolic.
CA: Why did it become symbolic?
Alê Abreu: Because I feel that joy is the basic emotion of life and of human beings. It’s what supports everything. We are here to be happy. We are to enjoy “alegria.”
CA: We are born happy and full of joy, sadness and all other emotions come after.
Alê Abreu: Absolutely. “Alegria” is the first word in that song, but then there are seven other words. The first one is “Alegria” and the last one is “Voz” or “Voice.” You start with “Alegria,“ then “Libertad,” or "Freedom" and then other words until you have a “Voice.” You depart from joy until you get a voice. These seven words were carefully selected for the song, which was written by Gustavo Kurlat, one of the film's composers.
CA: The dialogue we hear in the film is a language you created by assembling sentences using Portuguese words written backwards. This also applies to any billboards or signs in the film. Why was the lack of understandable spoken and written language important to you? Even without a single word you manage to express very complex ideas about the world and how it works.
Alê Abreu: The entire time I was following the feelings experienced by children, so the feeling of not understanding what adults say was very important to put the audience in this frequency to understand the world through his eyes. We discovered this halfway through the process. When we started making the film there were some lines of dialogue in Portuguese, but we then changed our minds. The film started from very specific issues in the world, in particular Latin America, but halfway through the journey we felt the necessity to have more universal ideas that were not so specific. They didn’t need to be specifically South American or Latin American. Instead we discovered we were talking about human beings in general. We realized that these are not issues only pertinent to Latin America: poverty, misery, consumerism, etc.
The world’s geography is not realistic. Geography is not real. Borders are only closed to people but they are open to products. There is another type of geography outside of this matrix. Because of this we noticed we were talking about much more than just Latin America. That was very important to put the film on another level. Based on this idea, we knew that we were not in this world any longer. We were in another planet and we were reaching for something closer to a fable. It was something fabulous. I started looking at the film as if it happened in another planet and that allowed me even more freedom.
Looking through a child’s eyes and knowing this was another planet, we decided to design the machines with eyes and bodies like animals, we also decided that this planet has two moons, and we decided that anything else we wanted to do was allowed. It was a new perspective to make the film. That’s when I thought, “I don’t need these few dialogue lines in Portuguese. What are we going to do? We are going to create a language in which the words are pronounced backwards and we are going to put subtitles on the screen.” Then we realized it wasn’t necessary to put them. There is no reason to understand what they are saying. Each person can understand it however they like.
CA: There were no limitations
Alê Abreu: No. We were breaking away from anything that linked us to this world, but by doing that those ideas remained even stronger. Fables represent the basis for what I wanted to say about human beings.
CA: This idea of machines replacing the human touch in almost all endeavors also speaks to the way animation is being produced today. Digitally made films with very specific financial purposes have taken over market leaving little room for handcrafted works.
Alê Abreu: On another level this film talks about that. We had tremendous freedom while making this film. We never thought about marketing. It wasn’t a film made to sell merchandise or products or to reach millions of people around the world. It was a film made to say what I really felt. It’s a film made in a very radical creative manner. It was possible because we didn’t have to pander to capitalism. I think the film is also a humanistic cry for help for animation. It’s a film with sensitivities completely opposite to what the market wants to sell.
CA: Since those films are designed for mass appeal they take very few risks regarding the ideas or issues they deal with. It's hard to imagine a studio animated feature tackling the social justice concerns "Boy and the World" touches on.
Alê Abreu: The film gave me the possibility to create a new language. Animation is a very rich medium but hasn’t fully been exploited by artists. Often artists are trapped by words. Films are born from screenplays and they are guided by words. They are born very limited and there is no space for real creation: graphic creation, pictorial creation, or audiovisual creation. If we really want to use the art of animation with all its strength, we have to rethink the processes by which it’s made because the medium is the message. The way a film is made tells you about its message. The processes are the same as the products. We made the film starting from processes that allowed us to find these complex ideas. Director and producers have to take all the risks they can. We developed this film with the possibility to create departing from a blank page and to discover things as the process went along and as we understood the things that at first we couldn’t understand in words.
CA: Would you say that everything, even challenging political concepts, can be expressed truly visually without the need for words?
Alê Abreu: I think so, but each film has its processes. It doesn’t mean that all animated films have to be like “Boy and the World,” but creators have to have total freedom. There are films that are born with the purpose to sell. They are still admirable films with great artists and great visuals, but we wanted to use a more radical approach to create art. That’s what we tried to do.
CA: "Boy and the World" deals with our childhood memories and what we learn as we grow older and face the powers that rule our lives. Did you ever consider what elements of the film would appeal to younger viewers and which ideas would be better understood by adults? Sadly, we tend to underestimate how sophisticated young audiences can be.
Alê Abreu: During the entire process of making this film I never thought about whom I was making it for. I always thought that the film was for me, but I didn’t think of any of that. I just did what I thought I had to do. I didn’t think, “This is what children are going to think” or “This is what adults will understand.” At the end of the process we called a market research company to find out whom the film was for or what was the target audience. We didn’t have a lot of money to release the film, so in order for it to play in cinemas, which are dominated by films with much larger marketing budgets, we had to discover whom the film was for.
We hired this company and we rented a theater in a multiplex for 200 people. The first time the film was screened I was hidden, but part of my team was in the audience. There were a lot of kids and I was very nervous, but on this day I discovered the film spoke to everyone. After the screening there was a Q&A. There were people asking questions and we had a sort of debate. An adult said that he hadn’t understood the relationship between the three characters and a child raised his hand to explain it to him. At that moment I understood it wasn’t a film for children or for adults, but for everyone. It’s a very universal film.
Following this screening there was only one thing I changed because at the end of the film I felt a profound sadness. In there first version, where we now have a colorful village with a new musical bird emerging and this small band of children, there was instead a sequence were garbage from the city engulfed the boy’s house and his tree and there was a shot of all the things inside the house destroyed. It was very heavy. It didn’t have a glimpse of hope. I understood that the film was a beautiful piece of music but at that point it ended in a low note. I had to bring that final note higher.
We went back to the studio and I didn’t sleep for two or three nights until my assistant director told me to think about the small children band, which represents the new generation, but he suggested adding it during the credits. It was too much jumping around. We then experimented with other possibilities. We added the band, we eliminated the garbage, and we added this new village developing. When we saw it was like a completely nee film. At that moment I had the feeling that the film was finally done.
CA: Music takes on physical form in the film. Each note becomes a colorful floating sphere that belongs to a greater whole - the bird. How did this peculiar and poignant storytelling device originate?
Alê Abreu: I’m not sure. In one of those sketchbooks I used while doing the research for “Canto Latino,” there was a drawing of this boy with these colorful spheres around him that I had drawn, but at that point I didn’t know what they meant. My job was like that of a detective looking to make sense out things that I had felt and drawn before. The drawing precedes the explanation. The film was born out of sensations transformed into graphic images and then I tried to make poetic sense of them. For example if you give me three words I’ll try to make a poem with only those three words. You can write any words, but the meaning you are going to give these words comes from what you are feeling. The creative process happened that way.
I draw things on the paper very freely but believing there is meaning to them already. There is already meaning in the colors, I don’t need to be guided by words. I draw them and the meaning comes after. Every time we would start a new sequence we would change everything. We had 40 sequences in the film and for me a sequence in a film is like a phrase in a poem. We were trying to understand what each sequence meant in two or three words. We had a film with 40 lines, some stanzas, and some words.
CA: There is a moment in the film where the animated realm gives in to the destruction taking place in the real world. Fire comes in an we are taken into live-action footage that shows our voracity against nature. Why did you feel it was necessary to include this powerful clip?
Alê Abreu: It’s very interesting because that has to do with the language that I mentioned. The film started with a blank page where we created a young boy with a simple pencil drawing and then the world opens itself up for the boy and at the same time we add the pastels, inks, watercolors, and many other elements. As the boy goes from the city and what’s more mundane back home, we started cutting newspapers and made a collage to create the mundane and artificial aspect that mankind had given to nature.
We put all these things on top the blank page, which represents where we come from and where are going. The film starts on a blank page and ends on a blank page. That blank space is the most abstract thing. When we are born the memories we have are from an abstract space. I think we don’t die, but we instead travel to an abstract space like a blank page.
I wanted to translate that anguish of this oppressive situation in an audiovisual way. We tried to do it with collages but it wasn’t enough. Since we continued to work as animators and as artist with the freedom of adding things we first thought collages could work, but we couldn’t do that there, so we decided to completely rip this dream apart and added the live-action. We had to break away from animation. Poetically speaking, if you eliminate the animation you eliminate dreams. Adding the live-action sequence was as if we had destroyed the fable to not dream anymore. There are not dreams, no animation, no characters, but only the sad truth of what we are living now.
CA: This sequence is a heart-wrenching call for action. It urges us to open our eyes and react
Alê Abreu: I tried to translate that into this language and in this audiovisual poem with all the mixture of elements. In the midst of this mixture of techniques what would symbolize breaking away from the dream was to cut the animation completely because animation is the glue that gives you all the freedom.
CA: Tell me about the reaction to the film in Brazil. "Boy and the World" has received international acclaim, it's won numerous awards, and has screened at countless festivals, but was the reception at home as great given that you had to compete with animated offers from abroad?
Alê Abreu: It wasn’t great. The critical reception was really good, but we didn’t find a commercial space to screen the film, only in art house cinemas. We opened in 35 theaters in the entire country and we had 35,000 attendees. However, in France we opened on 90 screens for 7 months and we had over 120,000 attendees. In France “Boy and the World” was one of the tree best reviewed films by critics that year. It was very special. For local films in countries like Brazil or Mexico establishing commercial relationships is not easy. It’s very difficult for independent local films, for our films. It’s like having a supermarket where there is no room on the shelves or the marquee for your product. The market is completely taken. It’s an economic issue, but above all it’s political. For me it’s very simple, there is no space on the marquee for our films. People go to the supermarket not knowing what they want. They go and see what’s there. The company offering the products is more important. If the films were there people would see them. If you have a product and there is space on the shelves for it, there is a chance people will buy it. Right now there are no spaces for our films in our countries.
"Boy and the World" opens on December 11 in L.A. at Laemmle's North Hollywood and in NYC at IFC Center...
- 12/10/2015
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
The International Animated Film Society, Asifa-Hollywood, has announced the nominations for the 43rd Annual Annie Awards and "Inside Out" and "The Good Dinosaur," both Pixar movies, led the pack! "Inside Out" received fourteen nominations while "The Good Dinosaur" got nine.
My pick of the year for best animated feature is "Inside Out" but I love Charlie Kaufman's "Anomalisa" as well which picked five noms.
We'll find out the winners of the Annie Awards on February 6th!
Here is the full list of nominees in all categories of the 43rd Annie Awards:
Best Animated Feature
Anomalisa
Paramount Pictures
Inside Out
Pixar Animation Studios
Shaun the Sheep The Movie
Aardman Animations
The Good Dinosaur
Pixar Animation Studios
The Peanuts Movie
Blue Sky Studios, Twentieth Century Fox Animation
Best Animated Special Production
Elf: Buddy.s Musical Christmas
Warner Bros. Animation
He Named Me Malala
Parkes-MacDonald / Little Door
I Am A Witness
Moonbot...
My pick of the year for best animated feature is "Inside Out" but I love Charlie Kaufman's "Anomalisa" as well which picked five noms.
We'll find out the winners of the Annie Awards on February 6th!
Here is the full list of nominees in all categories of the 43rd Annie Awards:
Best Animated Feature
Anomalisa
Paramount Pictures
Inside Out
Pixar Animation Studios
Shaun the Sheep The Movie
Aardman Animations
The Good Dinosaur
Pixar Animation Studios
The Peanuts Movie
Blue Sky Studios, Twentieth Century Fox Animation
Best Animated Special Production
Elf: Buddy.s Musical Christmas
Warner Bros. Animation
He Named Me Malala
Parkes-MacDonald / Little Door
I Am A Witness
Moonbot...
- 12/2/2015
- by Manny
- Manny the Movie Guy
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