THE WOLF HOUSE / LA CASA LOBO
A film by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña
(Chile, 2018, 73 min. In Spanish and German with English subtitles)
Distributed by KimStim. Co-presented by Cinema Tropical.
Loosely based on the grim case of Colonia Dignidad, a German émigré-run colony in post-WWII Chile that was revealed to have been used to imprison, torture, and murder dissidents during the Pinochet regime, The Wolf House is an animated feature film with a much darker foundation than most. As deeply disturbing as its inspiration would suggest, it is also a truly inspired feat of animation, its extraordinary craft and artistic vision fusing with its profoundly sinister themes to create an experience of exceptional power.
Using stop-motion animation to unfurl a never-ending series of transformations that play out as a single sequence shot, Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña – making their first feature after a series of shorts – tell the grim fairy tale of Maria, a young woman who finds refuge in a house in the south of Chile after escaping from a sect of German religious fanatics. She is welcomed into the home by two pigs, the only inhabitants of the place. As in a dream, the universe of the house reacts to Maria’s feelings. The animals transform slowly into humans and the house becomes a nightmarish world.
Painstakingly produced over the course of several years, and filmed piecemeal within art galleries across several countries, in full view of the gallery-going public,The Wolf House masquerades as an animated fairy tale produced by the leader of the sect in order to indoctrinate its followers. It’s easily one of the most accomplished, transporting, and conceptually rich animated features to appear in recent memory.
“It’s commonplace that folk and fairy tales have their dark sides, but they don’t come much darker than in The Wolf House. Fusing Grimm, the early shorts of David Lynch and the stop-motion work of Jan Svankmajer into a visually engrossing, reference-rich and disturbing tale about the mental delirium of a young girl, the deeply uncanny film makes for an unsettling viewing experience, a creative tour de force whose endlessly fascinating visuals are deliberately seductive and repellent in equal measure.” –Jonathan Holland, Hollywood Reporter
Thursday - Sunday, August 26-29 at 7pm & 9pm nightly
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
New York City, NY
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
Watch the trailer:
