As published in CLAUDIA

Equity is an urgent issue when we look at the professional market and we still see few women effectively in leadership. Therefore, knowing that three young Brazilian women won Stories x Women 2024, being selected from more than 140 projects from more than 30 countries, is even more inspiring and important to them.

The program, which is supported by Disney (it is part of the Disney Future Storytellers initiative, which identifies talents for the creative industry) and UNESCO, aims precisely to increase diversity in the ultra-segmented animation market and found in the work of Camila Padhila, Fernanda Alves Salgado and Giuliana Danza authenticity and originality, helping them prepare for their presentation at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the International Animated Film Market (MIFA) 2024, both in June, in France. Having just arrived from the trip, still tired, but reinvigorated by the opportunity, they sat down to tell CLAUDIA about the experience exclusively. And I was the one who came away inspired and crazy to see their films! I bet you will have the same feeling…

CLAUDIA: I wanted to start our chat by congratulating everyone because, in a scenario as barren for women as animation, you represented not only women but Brazil with two selected projects. You are already the winner! So the first question, obviously, is to tell you how animation came into your life and if there is a character or animation that marked your childhood the most.

CAMILA: It really is a passion. I’m not an animator – I know how to animate – but I’m a storyboarder and basically, I’ve been eating cartoons since I was a child. I know that at some point people stop liking it and start to think it’s for children, but for me, it never stopped. Animation is a world of possibilities. In animation, physics, and mathematics be damned. I mean, not so much the math, but screw the physics. [laughs] The important thing is to look cool and I think the art is really cool. And Disney cartoons have always been, like, a big, big inspiration for me. And the favorite for me has always been Mulan. I have a group of friends who watch Mulan every year. It’s the film that I love with passion, which is my inspiration in life and everything. Another one that inspired me to become a director is Nightmare Before Christmas, which was produced by Tim Burton and directed by Henry Selick, who now has an autograph! [laughter]

FERNANDA: I’m not an animator either, I’m a screenwriter, director, producer, and partner at a creative studio here in Belo Horizonte called Apiário and we’ve always been very attracted to animation. We’ve done a lot of documentaries, and live-action fiction, but we always end up going back to animation. And I think that for me, in particular, there is poetry, a magic in animation that is what makes it so powerful and so valuable. There’s this aspect that Camila was talking about, where you can break the laws of the world and create a completely new universe. There’s this magic in this place, but there’s also a magic in another place that creates images that don’t necessarily need to be real. It gives room for fantasy, for imagination, for a subtlety that sometimes live-action doesn’t have. The poetry of animation lies precisely in these possibilities, in these gaps that it opens in terms of narrative, aesthetics, and meanings. And what has inspired me the most for some time now has been the film Waking Life, which is a rotoscope full of poetry.

GIULIANA: My path is a little more tortuous, because I started a little older, already approaching 30. And, in fact, I had several signals throughout my life that the animation was supposed to end and I didn’t listen to myself. [laughs] I ended up choosing to do occupational therapy first and it was really cool because what attracted me to the profession was precisely the issue of using art to deal with people, illnesses, etc. The first time I went to the cinema, I must have been a little under 10 years old, there were still street cinemas, and here in Belo Horizonte, there was a street cinema next to a square where they held matinees for children on Sundays. My dad took me and my two younger brothers and Tom and Jerry were passing by. The score was played live by a pianist and it was fantastic. That memory is very vivid in my head, the children running, a commotion in the cinema, that area, and I sat, taking it all in, and I was moved, I cried. And then, growing up, I had a wonderful family, with incredible women, who made crafts and art, and my mother brought me a book by Raquel Coelho about animated films for children. Afterward, I started having contact with workshops here in BH through several festivals, and incredible free workshops, but that fear of taking flight in the art field ended up taking me to occupational therapy. After I graduated, I said “Guys, I need to study Fine Arts” and there was an animation course there, which was a qualification created in partnership with the National Film Board and I discovered animated cinema. As soon as I graduated, I abandoned occupational therapy and started doing workshops. It was a period (in 2010) when the market was deciding whether to take on authorial animations or become slaves to large outside productions. Good thing people decided to start producing too! [laughter].

CLAUDIA: We laughed because I summarized that you work in animation and the market is much broader, right? How do people understand when you say you work with “animation”?

CAMILA: When you say ‘animation’, the first thing that comes to their mind is that you work at a children’s party. [laughs] Seriously! It’s the first thing that comes to people’s minds! And in fact, everyone who works in animation is also a filmmaker. I say: I’m a director and an editor, but I can also do background. After all, it ends up that the person who draws because not everyone who works in animation necessarily draws, can do everything. I started doing setup and went through several, several, several steps until I got to where I really wanted, which was the storyboard, which is where I’m comfortable. But as a friend defined it: anyone who works with animation is a “character designer”, necessarily an “artist”. There’s a deadline to meet! [laughs] You are a character designer, set designer.

CLAUDIA: But in the world of Animation, even more than the rest of the industry, women’s representation is still lacking. As a result, there are organizations and studios like Disney itself, working to reduce this reality. What is this challenge like for you?

CAMILA: There have always been women, but perhaps now our stories are being highlighted a little more. Disney, for example, has always made female characters, right? The problem is that famous test that analyzes the film and sees how many lines the character has, what she does, if what she is saying is about her or what she needs to do, or if it is about men, if all the characters Those surrounding her are men.

FERNANDA: Bechamel test.

CAMILA: Yes! He measures that even with several films with female protagonists, she doesn’t have as much speech as men in the film, many other male characters surround this character and make her make certain decisions, or this female character, who has a female friend Also, you’re always talking about a man, you know? That’s why today screenwriters are taking a little more care when creating. In animation, there are already several examples, very cool. What inspires me most is Rebecca Sugar, director of Steven Universe, and in the 1950s, the person who created all of Disney’s concept art, including Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, and Sleeping White, was Mary Blair, who created super a painting trend and everything. But, in fact, now the question of leadership is starting to really come to light in other stories…

FERNANDA: I would complement it by thinking about the research that Women in Animation released in 2019, which showed that the half-half split between men and women was noticeable in animation courses, but, within the industry, this proportion was not equivalent in creative leadership positions. In the industry, you actually have more men in creative positions, and women in producer positions, which often in cinema is very much a surrogate mother. And I add an addendum: women of color were practically non-existent. That’s why work has been done to reverse the situation and Women in Animation has a proposal for gender parity, which is still in process. Bringing together several female representatives from the industry in the same place to discuss these points is also super valuable so that we can understand not only the difficulties but also possible solutions and how to move to get to these places. Ancine here in Brazil also publishes information regarding these parties. We still have a lot of work to do.

CLAUDIA: And there is also a lot of the message we send in the stories, as you said, the female characters, even though they were leading, were led to prioritize the man…

CAMILA: Yes, we see a thousand cases of female characters who give up their goals in pursuit of love, right? As they say: ‘the woman learned to love the man and the man learned to love himself, life and various other interests’. It reminds me of Toy Story 4, where men are represented by the Woody doll and when he drops everything to pursue his love, many of my male friends criticize this choice. Like this? They said, ‘This has nothing to do with the character. He would never do that,’ but I keep thinking, that if Woody were a woman, and he had let go of her goal As a heroine to go after love, it would be accepted as normal.

CLAUDIA: Yes, some generations are created according to this principle. That’s the thing: Cinderella went to the ball to wear the dress, not to meet the prince! [laughs] But, back to you: your projects were chosen from more than 140 from more than 30 countries and only five would be selected. Of the five, two Brazilians! How was the experience at the Annecy festival?

GIULIANA: Wow, I still don’t know how the girls are, but it was an intense and incredible week, full of lots of new things. I had already been to the festival twice, but never as a director. It was an unbelievable process. I remember that when Fernanda came with this suggestion that we register for the project, I was, as always, in disbelief. We were selected, and the training began, I had to do the pitch in English, which was unimaginable because I don’t speak the language very well, I was super nervous, but it was really cool. I feel now that we will get there much more prepared. Our project grew and matured a little more. We realized where to improve because in a presentation for people outside Brazil to speak Candomblé to children, with very characteristic characters that only those from this African cosmogony can understand, and have a different perspective, right?

FERNANDA: I agree with Gi. The Annecy Festival is the largest international animation festival, so for us to have been selected to present a project within the festival, within the festival’s market event, is already something extraordinary and to also bring this support from Women Animation, Disney, UNESCO It is very valuable for the project in this growth, in this development, until it obtains financing, until it can produce, until it can distribute. It’s a long process, a big journey still ahead. We had very interesting exchanges and we supported each other during the workshop process, during the pitch, and this proximity, this confluence of ideas and desires and difficulties, but also of solutions, reverberates and continues.

CLAUDIA: Tell me what your project is about?

FERNANDA: Aimó is a feature film that tells the story of a girl called Aimó, who is dead, discovers herself dead in Orun, in the spiritual world, and then wants to return to life and sets out on a journey through the mythological stories of the orixás, collecting magical objects and escaping death to decide whether you really want to come back to life or not.

CAMILA: Jaé Natal is Cora, a rebellious girl who lives on an island where every day is carnival. That’s the law of the island, there’s no room for any other celebration, it’s just carnival and every day until one day, looking through her beloved late mother’s things, Cora discovers an eccentric and strange party called Christmas and decides she wants to do it at a tropical island Hollywood Christmas, full of snow and Santa Claus. But she eventually discovers that this party could turn into real chaos.

CLAUDIA: And the next steps?

FERNANDA: We have to go through a second stage of development, work more on the script, and seek financing for production.

CAMILA: After all the feedback from the Festival, we really need to go through this development and money stage.

CLAUDIA: I hope you can do it! And what advice do you have for other girls, for other people who want to develop, and enter this market?

CAMILA: I would say trust your instincts a lot, because it’s real, like that. Go with your instinct, don’t try to fit into a box of what animation is, what telling a story is, or what a hero’s journey is, etc. Do it your way, because the industry needs new, different, and original stories.

FERNANDA: My suggestion would be to watch a lot of different things to get in touch with as many different things as possible to find what really inspires you, what makes you want to do things too.

GIULIANA: I would suggest for those who are starting out, women who are starting out, to look for national and international support groups. Because that makes a total difference.

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