Dec 9, 2024

2025 Academy Awards Short Contender: “La Perra,” directed by Carla Melo Gampert

Cartoon Brew spotlights an animated short film that has been nominated for the 2025 Academy Awards.

In this issue, we present “La Perra (The Bitch)” by Colombian director Carla Melo Gampert. The short won the Golden Gate Award for Best Animated Short at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Best Latin American Short Animation at ChileMono, and Best Animated Short at Bogoshorts, and qualified for the Academy Awards.

In this brutal but moving story of a mother-daughter relationship, a bird girl leaves her family home in Bogota, her domineering mother, and her faithful dog to explore her sexuality. Thoughts and memories of her beloved dog accompany the bird girl on her difficult life journey. A co-production between Evidencia Films, a Bogota-based production company, and Paris-based June Films.

Cartoon Brew: Your film depicts a society that is harsh for female characters, but in the end their unity brings them to an inspiring conclusion.

Cartoon Brew: What do you hope to convey about the state of society today by sharing this film with a global audience?

Carla Melo Gamper: I grew up in a sexist society in Colombia and attended a very classist and moralistic school in Bogotá. I remember this environment, the soap operas, the different words I would hear at school: bitch, dog, wolf, chicken ... All female animals. I wanted to fit in with the class, I wanted to receive my first communion just like them, and I was angry that my mother, for example, did not even baptize me. At the time, my mother was independent, a professional bassist, and separated ...... All of this began to affect my relationship with my mother, plus I felt lonely during my adolescence, a time when it was very difficult to talk to her. La Pella is a product of the distorted imagination of a young girl who criticizes her mother's freedom and assumes the role of the man in the house, the moral police, without being aware of the complexity and freedom of being a woman. La Pella embodies a companionship and complicity that my mother and I found difficult. It was a testament to how society turns women into dogs. Yet, hard to see because of the many social traps that permeate our lives, a bitch is all about love and compassion.

What about this story or concept resonated with you and inspired you to direct this film? We walked up the paved road towards the mountains. My mother looked tired and my dog could barely walk. He was skinny, dark-haired, brown-eyed, quiet, and ...... I thought about old age, about my tired body, and about the women who were part of my life. On the cement, I saw a black shadow spreading from my dog's body. It was deformed, monstrous, and growing. It seemed to tell me that death was approaching, and it terrified me. The image of her shadow made me realize that I needed to make a film about the body, time, women, and how the social gaze infiltrates the family bond.

What did you learn about the production aspect, the filmmaking aspect, the creative aspect, or the subject matter through the experience of making this film? When we started making the animation it took a strange turn. It was a reflection of a negotiation between conscious ideas and the surprises that come from different artistic media. Even though the animation team was instructed to “let go” and draw in “their style,” you could sense the universe and the people behind the picture in every frame. The expressive power of the pictures tells the story. The paper chosen, the way the ink was absorbed, was a way to talk about unconscious skin aging, about the quest to hold liquid inside the skin and lines.

It was also my first team project, and I am very grateful to the animators, my fellow ink artists (none of us were animators), and the sound engineers who brought my conga to life. The story transformed during production and became different from the script. Part of it is personal, but there is a lot of fiction, thanks to the many hands, ideas, and universes of the people who were part of the team. This makes it a larger story. I was very surprised at how the hand-drawn short animated films affected the audience. Some were moved, some saw only the dirt and took away an artistic experience, and others were deeply troubled by the film. One of the most rewarding parts of the process, and one of the most incredible things about animation, was seeing how expression and the body of work can be translated into different countries, people, and universes, regardless of language.

On the one hand, I wanted to play a little with breaking the stereotypes of children's animation. It starts out as a kind of story about a baby chick and then ventures into a more uncomfortable and graphic place. It is a constant metamorphosis, which is why I chose to use watercolors. Its ambiguity, its metamorphic nature, and its expressive and “dirty” potential. The techniques of ink and watercolor create uncontrollable stains and textures that also independently tell a story. I was interested in telling a physical story about women aging, changing, growing hair, and the discomfort it implies in our society. The ink expands as it passes through water, forming a greenish, hair-like texture, and the more water is added, the more the paper wrinkles. Each stroke affects the paper, as if one could touch the skin and emotions of the characters with each stroke.

I was concerned that the ink would vibrate too much for the human eye to handle on a large screen with 12 frames per second. In retrospect, however, I think this was a fortunate idea. Because we see unstable characters who are afraid of growing up, trying to do their best as mothers and daughters, and struggling not to give up. In the end, their necks connect when they understand each other as women and support each other as a family.