Anima Mundi do Brasil na Coréia do Sul - Brazilian Ambassador - Text for the catalogue

Subject: Brazilian Ambassador - Text for the catalogue

Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 17:34:24 +0900

The last 30 years... (of animation in Brazil)

Having just recently joined the diplomatic community in Seoul, I have great satisfaction to start by introducing to the Korean audience, and specially to Korean animators, teachers and students, this showcase of the best of the Brazilian Animation, a handpicked selection carefully made by Anima-Mundi’s (the Brazilian International Animation Festival) Director, Mrs. Lea Zagury, here with us.

I am particularly fond of this kind of cultural exchange: putting together professionals and institutions of different cultures with a keen interest in the same subject. I hope that this retrospective of the last thirty or so years of Brazilian Animation will further increase the mutual understanding and friendship that exist between our countries, specially after the sixties, when thousands of Korean nationals have chosen Brazil as their new home and have heartily been received by the people of São Paulo and the rest of the country.

There is a lot to learn from this mutual exchange. We will now show an excellent sample of our production. We hope that it will stimulate Korean artists and people to visit Brasil and participate of the Anima-Mundi Festival on July 2004 in Rio de Janeiro. Let me just say that the Korean production participated with 7 films and 2 videos in the las Rio Festival (July, 2003).

Brazil has been flirting with the art of animation since the beginning of the century with sometimes long intervals of almost no production. In 1917 the caricaturist Álvaro Seth Marins, presented what is perhaps our first animated film, “Kaiser”, a short satire against the war and the dreams of the German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II in dominating the world. But only twelve years later came another important work, “Macaco Feio, Macaco Bonito” (Ugly Monkey, Beautiful Monkey), directed by Luiz Seel and João Stamato, the last was a collaborator of Seth Marins on advertising productions. The first real long length animation in Brazil was “Sinfonia Amazônica”, by Anélio Lattini Filho, a greater admirer of the Disney style, he animated the film all by himself and shot it in black and white which became a classic.

In the 80’s Brazil and Canada started a cooperation plan and the Technical Center of EMBRAFILME. The National Film Board of Canada supplied equipment and training. Two Canadian animators along with a Brazilian awarded animator Marcos Magalhães ministrated an internship to a group of 10 Brazilian animators. That was where and when the four future directors of Anima Mundi met. This project alone have played a very interesting result in the Brazilian Animation industry, with the creation of the Anima-Mundi Festival in Rio de Janeiro, in 1993, by a group of young artists – one of them here present, Lea Zagury. Having said that, I think, we have the opportunity to be exposed to the best of what the Brazilian animators have produced in the last 30 years.

I hope you will enjoy it!

Pedro Paulo Assumpção

Ambassador of Brazil

Seoul, Republic of Korea

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