The filmmaker Salvador Simó has praised the good moment that Spanish cinema is experiencing of animation worldwide and ensures that “It is considered one of the best in the world“and highlights that “almost every year some Spanish film wins the animation prize from the European Academy.”
“At the level of quality, we are passing our hand in the face even of the French who have always been considered the best in animation in Europe“, commented the director, in an interview with Europa Press, on the occasion of the theatrical release on April 19 of the Spanish-Chinese co-production, ‘Guardian of Dragons’.
However, Simó has stated that Spanish animation is managing to be one of the best with “ridiculous budgets” and he regrets that the administrations do not see the potential of the genre.
“What we are achieving is done with ridiculous budgets and at the cost of suffering a lot. It’s a shame that governments don’t realize that animation is a very powerful industry. In Japan, Japanese animation brings a lot of money to the country and here, unfortunately, if we don’t have the budgets to do it, we ended up having to make animated films with Netflix, with I don’t know what. When in the end the benefit does not come home, but goes to others, although the talent is here,” she lamented.
His animated film has managed to be the first animated film to open the Malaga Festival in its 27 editions and Simó is betting that ‘Guardian of Dragons’ will join the list of animated films that “lift” the genre in Spain. “There has been a whole generation that has had to go to work abroad and now we are returning to set up studios and projects here. The quality is very high, as has been demonstrated with ‘Klaus’, ‘Robot Dreams’ or ‘Chico and Rita,'” he stated.
On the other hand, questioned by the separation in some awards between Best Film and Best Animated Film, Simó believes that the unification between both categories in Spain is “very difficult” due to a “cultural issue.” “When an animated film competes with fiction films, they have a very difficult time, because everyone considers animation as something for children. Many times juries consider it for children’s audiences and it is difficult for films to consider them as something on the same level,” he explained.
“Animation is just a technique for telling a story and the story is told in the same way as in a fiction film. The only difference is that the actors are drawn. A fiction director and an animation director choose a close-up or a long shot under the same terms. Everything that is part of the final frame, at a conceptual level, is the same,” he stated.
CULTURAL SHOCKS WITH CHINA
‘Dragon Guardian’ It is based on the first of the six novels in the multi-award-winning literary saga of the same name by Carole Wilkinson. The plot revolves around the adventures of a girl and a dragon who fight against their defined destiny.
Salvador Simó responds that “yes” it is a miracle that this film has seen the light because they have dealt with the pandemic in Spain and the pandemic in China and confesses that without the collaboration of China it was “very complicated” to make it due to its high budget.
“Our most repeated phrase has been ‘we are growing dwarfs’. We have had everything, including two pandemics because there was ours and China’s, and that ate up almost two years of production“, he revealed.
The Spanish-Chinese co-production has had to overcome some adversities due to the clash of cultures between Spain and China. “Chinese storytelling and culture is very different from the rest of the world. We had the main direction and the entire creative part and we were very clear that it was a film that had to be for all audiences and for everyone.. It didn’t matter if only the Chinese liked it or only Western people liked it. “We had to find a way to tell the story as internationally as possible,” he said.
One of the main differences is that the protagonist in the film is a servant and in the book she is a slave. “In China they told us that there had never been a slave there and that we could not say that she was a slave and we had to accept“, he remembers. However, Simó put his “fist on the table” when China wanted to suppress a scene in which the girl hugs her teacher. “They told us that that couldn’t be, that a girl in China culturally never goes to hug anyone who is not a family member. And there we said that we were very sorry, but that it was something very important for the story,” she revealed.
Although it is an animated film, The filmmaker assures that it has different aspects from the rest of the films of the genre because it recovers the way of telling the adventures of the 80s and 90s. “Nowadays, animated films have a lot of humor, but this one recovers the way of telling the adventures of the 80s and 90s, with films like ‘Indiana Jones’ or ‘The Goonies,'” details the director.