Every Tuesday, Chris Robinson screens and hastily responds to (relatively) new animation short films. Today: 9:30am
'9:30am' by Alfonso de la Cruz
Hey, I’m in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico helping the Guanajuana International Film Festival celebrate Canadian cinema and doing some jurying…so why not give some shout outs to our Mexican animation chums.
Today’s short is 9:30am (2015) by Alfonso de la Cruz, a poetic, magic realist ode to a lonely childhood that takes us through the vivid imaginings of a young disabled boy spending his summer with his grandmother. With so much complex, mysterious and tragic stuff unfolding in front of him, his sole recourse is to dive into his imagination to find meaning and joy in the world.
“I was raised by my great grandmother,” de la Cruz said in a 2015 interview with Rebus Farm, “and almost everything that happens in the short film happened to me in real life. Being raised in that way helped me to understand life in a special way. I wrote the story at night over about two weeks and almost at the same time I made a rough storyboard. 9:30 in the morning is the time when I used to have breakfast with my great grandmother.”
9:30am is a nice reminder that sometimes we need to feel more and think less.
A well-known figure in the world of independent animation, writer, author & curator Chris Robinson is the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
