León & Cociña's film premieres at Venice Film Festival

Los Huesos, the new short film by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña premieres this week at Venice Film Festival.

Firstshowing.net writes:

"This is the latest work from the Chilean experimental animators Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León (they made The Wolf House recently) and it's exec produced by horror director Ari Aster. What's their new 14-min short about? "Shot on a 16mm Bolex, the short is a fictitious account of the world’s first stop-motion animated film. Dated 1901 and excavated in 2021 as Chile drafts a new Constitution, the footage documents a ritual performed by a girl who appears to use human corpses. Emerging in the ritual are Diego Portales and Jaime Guzmán, central figures in the construction of authoritarian and oligarchic Chile." It features music by Tim Fain, a Philip Glass collaborator and exquisite violinist.

Using human corpses and invoking the spirits of two damned Secretaries of State, a girl performs a ritual to free the kingdom of Chile from its feudal heritage. "Los Huesos is born from fiction: a series of film tapes and pieces of mummified bodies appear in an excavation," the directors say. "The discovered film material turns out to be the world’s first stop-motion animation film. Dated 1901, this film was produced in Chile a few years before the first European and North American animations known to date." Los Huesos, which translates to The Bones, is written and directed and animated by Chilean filmmakers Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León, who made their feature directorial debut with the film The Wolf House (La casa lobo) in 2018. They have also directed numerous other short films. This one is premiering at the 2021 Venice Film Festival playing in the Orizzonti section."

Watch the trailer here.

Publication date: 1 Sep '21