Early on, Mexican Animation never held an important place in the artistic and industrial evolution of national cinema. Quite the contrary, the production of animated films was very patchy; since 1934, it stumbled forward leaving a trail of unfinished projects influenced by Hollywood animated cinema. This in turn paved the way for more daring filmmakers moving away from the mainstream who would emerge and develop during the 1980’s, 1990’s and, especially, in the 21st century.
Alfonso Vergara Andrade directed the first short film, Paco Perico en Premier, in 1935. It was a comic cartoon running 8:46 minutes, influenced by Disney and Max Fleischer. However, the more artistic proposals with a national and international impact on critics and at festivals only emerged in the 1980’s with films such as Crónicas del Caribe by Emilio Watanabe and Francisco López from 1982, an anti-colonialist story about the conquest of America that used cartoons and moving cutouts. In 1994 the 5-minute short The Hero directed by Carlos Carrera was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It was drawn using acrylic and crayons on acetate and tells the story of a man who tries to rescue a suicidal teenager, using an aesthetic of the ludicrous seasoned with black humor.
In the field of animated feature films, the commercial triumph of the digital animated comedy A Movie of Eggs, made by Gabriel and Rodolfo Riva Palacio Alatriste in 2006, proved key to the recovery of Mexican cinema after a prolonged crisis, and it became the highest grossing film in Mexican history. Two sequels were well-received and the fourth film in the saga is currently in production. Top Cat, directed by Alberto Mar, was the most successful film of 2011. In those years, several production companies specializing in animation emerged, such as Ánima Estudios (2002), Huevocartoon (2006), and Animex (2007).
Meanwhile, in the field of short films, the work of animators from the city of Guadalajara became the most important facet of Mexican animation, far away from commercial tenets. The movement is characterized by an outrageous aesthetic and black humor as recurring ingredients, as well as the use of stop motion, plasticine, puppets, dolls, and everyday objects. This group of artists is also defined by their careful craftsmanship; they can take years to create highly detailed characters and settings, using meticulous photography that adds texture to images, and a sound design in which the absence of dialogue predominates as they hone sound and music.
Some of the most outstanding shorts offer a visual and sensory experience that sometimes goes beyond the film’s narrative. These include the black erotic comedy about a suicidal bachelor No Support by René Castillo and Antonio Urrutia, a participant in the short film competition at Cannes in 1998, and the festive but macabre Down to the Bone directed by René Castillo in 2001, in which a man enters a very Mexican folkloric world of the dead, inspired by the work of José Guadalupe Posada. Death and the ominous is also featured in The Waterwheel by Karla Kastañeda from 2017, a drama and fantasy about the death of a son and the mourning father. A girl who mourns the loss of her grandfather is the subject of Rain in the Eyes by Rita Basulto (2013), a melodramatic fantasy that is far from gloomy. Much more sinister and Gothic is Cerulia from 2017 directed by Sofía Carrillo, the tale of a young woman haunted by her past who returns to her childhood home. Additionally, other short films with fantastic themes stand out. The Aeronauts directed by León Fernández in 2016 is about a strange tribe that survives in a desert dominated by a winged monster; in 2017 Luis Téllez directed Long Live the King, where a chessboard in the clouds ends in a game of thrones. More recently in 2021, Uncle by Juan José Medina mixes realism and horror to tell the story of a teenager who wants to work in a mine and ends up meeting a deity face-to-face. Several of the afore-mentioned filmmakers participated in the Oscar-winning feature Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, 2022). And yet, producing short animation involves years of work under highly difficult production circumstances, making these animators’ achievements even more remarkable.
