11 · 07 · 10

Beatriz Herrera’s Ponkina – Best Fiction Short at FICM 2010

Clara Sánchez translated by Cindy Hawes

Director Beatriz Herrera and producer Luis Vázquez, whose film Ponkina won the Best Fiction Short FICM 2010, were present during a question and answer session after the presentation.

Ponkina is about a little girl who finds a cat hidden in a bush and wants to adopt it as a pet, without realizing the problems it will cause at home.

In explaining how she conceived the idea of the story and the character, Herrera said, “Ever since I was a little girl I’ve always liked to draw. I would make drawings in the corners of my notebooks and I would flip them [the pages] so they would move. I’ve always loved animals too and that is why I included a cat here. The girl’s name is actually a bad word. I have a niece who as a child learned a lot of bad words from my mother. My brother, her father, scolded her and told her not to repeat them. She then began inventing her own words and one of them was Ponkina.”

The director, who has worked on projects like El Chavo del 8 and on the feature film Héroes verdaderos by Carlos Kuri, added, “I first began to develop the character as though it were a game. I began to do the animation in my free time. After working for two or three months, my colleagues convinced me to finish the story and this is the result. Luis Vásquez, my producer, also helped me to relax and draw, so I had fun doing the work.”
 
Ponkina is an animated film that has been highly praised for its technique using pencil drawings. Asked about the difficulties she encountered drawing in black and white compared to color, the artist responded, “The design was like a sketch. When I started to animate it, the team proposed that I apply color digitally. We tried, but the freshness was lost, so we decided to keep the black and white … that way it appears more artisanal.”

Vázquez added, “In animated drawings one of the things we like the most are the sketches. Any animation you see in 2D or 3D from Ponkina to Toy Story 3 starts with a blank page and a pencil. The artist makes the design and those first lines are what excite us. When Bety began animating the sequence of the girl running as a test in pencil, we loved it.”

Vázquez explained that although BL Cartoons -- the studio where they worked -- uses the latest in technology, the essential thing was to respect Herrera’s drawings. “In this production we used Toon Boom software which is the same used in the last season of The Simpsons and Disney’s The Princess and the Toad. With this program we could have applied color very quickly but for us it was very important to respect the drawings of the artist, and for that reason we decided to leave it this way.”

The other films in the program that received awards include Best Fiction Short Film, La mina de oro (The Gold Mine) by Jacques Bonnavent, Studio 5 de Mayo Special Award, El venado y la niebla (The Deer and the Fog) by Miguel Ventura and Special Mention Busco empleo (Looking for a Job) by the late director, Francisco Valle.

The winning short films in the categories of Fiction and Animation are eligible to compete for an Oscar nomination thanks to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Hollywood’s official recognition of the Morelia International Film Festival.

A selection of the winning films made by the Selection Committee of Critic’s Week will also be screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
 
“The Best of FICM in the DF” will continue at the MUAC from Nov. 12 to 14.