Los Angeles Filmforum presents *The Wolf House* (*La Casa Lobo*), by Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña. Chile, 2018, color/sound, 75 minutes. Preceded by two short films by Sarah Jenkins and Benni Quintero.

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Collective trauma retold as a shadowy fairy tale.

Mixing together cues from The Three Little Pigs, The Brothers Grimm, and Alice in Wonderland, this surreal nightmare unfolds one frame at a time. In the hellish regime of Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet, an isolated Nazi run commune flourished in which numerous children and political dissidents were tortured and abused.

La Casa Lobo is a hooded film with grime, soot, dust, and charcoal littering the environ of each room. There is no respite. There is no reprieve. The style of animation, called simultaneously palimpsest, destructive, or draw & erase, is a constant stream of change. The characters warp and shift changing mediums as they change forms. Characters are constantly painted over again and again and again creating a new image while, also, still showing the previous ones. The history of each shot cannot be erased fully, the ebbing remains.

In order to expedite the lengthy animation process and respect the ever-changing nature of the project, the filmmakers employed a Dogme 95-esque series of ten rules. Among them, no puppets were rigged, no shots fade to black, and the film is one long continuous shot. The final rule, number 10, may be the most revealing; “it’s a workshop, not a set”, a phrase reminiscent of another, “it’s a promise, not a threat”.

This is an 18+ event

Presented by LA Filmforum

LA Filmforum: The Wolf House

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2220 Arts + Archives

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