Women Cinemakers meets
María Lorenzo Lives and works in Valencia, Spain
At the turn of the 20th century, pioneers from around the world competed to conquer and spread the art of animated photographs; in this pursue, the Lumières’ Cinematograph prevailed over others inventions whose names evoked, like the gods, power over the living: Etienne-Jules Marey’s Chronophotography, Dickson’s and Edison’s Kinetoscope, Eadweard Muybridge’s Zoopraxicope, and many others. Nowadays, however, pre-film inventions and devices continue to inspire many filmmakers who incorporate them into their movies, performances at galleries or multimedia shows. The animated short film Impromptu is a tribute to the origins of film through its forgotten parents, for cinema never was the invention of a single person, not two, but of many pioneers who contributed their ideas and innovations in the late nineteenth century. Most remarkably, Impromptu is a homage to that Fin-du-siècle period, to their female muses — such as Loïe Fuller, Carmencita or Anna Belle —, and to the fascination for movement itself. Impromptu is a joyful interlude where the past emerges in full color and excites the imagination, stimulating a feeling of nostalgia. The creative process behind Impromptu has led to combine different languages of animation with five musical themes by Fryderyk Chopin, to explore the underlying poetry of the score. Intentionally, each animated segment from Impromptu is conceived from a premise, suggested by the characteristics of the music themes. Thus, the first segment, “Prelude”, brings back the magic of Phenakistiscopes, an early animation device invented symultaneously by Joseph Plateau and Simon von Stampfer by 1832. The second movement, “Serpentine”, takes the chronophotographies by Muybridge, Ottomar Anschütz, Marey, or the early films recorded at the Black Maria studio, to recreate a lively dance. The third part, “Faces”, reunites 300 portraits that move to evoke Georges Demenÿ’s “portraits vivants”, looking for a continuous movement or raccord relation between them. The fourth part, “The Man on the Train” takes freely from the mysterious disappearance on board a train of film pioneer Louis LePrince, who recorded live action scenes on paper strips by 1888. To finish, “The Wave” suggests the movement of the sea from an abstract, geometric reduction, to eventually reach realism, as a tribute to Marey’s first chronophotographic film, “The Wave”, featured in 1891 at La Revue Générale des Sciences. Impromptu was shortlisted for the Spanish Academy of Film “Goya” Awards in 2018. It was produced by Enique Millán in Valencia, with the cooperation of the animation studio Pterodactive, and with Universitat Politècnica de València.
An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant
introduce you to our readers with a couple
womencinemaker@berlin.com
of questions regarding your background.
Hello María and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to
Are there any particular experiences that did influence your current practice? In