Isabel Herguera is a visual artist, director, producer and animation film teacher with a long international career, and a great expert on Animac, since she was the director from 2003 to 2011. An animation film director with international training and professional experience, Isabel Herguera graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country, continued her studies at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf as a student of the video artist Nam June Paik, and completed her training with a Master’s Degree at the California Institute of the Arts, CalArts, in Los Angeles. From 1990 to 2003, she lived in Los Angeles where she worked as an animator for Acme Filmworks, Klasky Csupo, and for directors such as Maureen Selwood, Raimund Krumme and Sue Laughlin or Paul Vester, and collaborated on music videos like “All Around the World” by Oasis (1997) or Sting’s Interactive CD Rom “All this Time” (1996). In 1996, she set up Loko Pictures, an animation studio where she produced and directed works for clients such as Philip Morris, FOX, Procter and Gamble and HBO, among others. In 2003, she returned to Europe to direct Animac and coordinate the Arteleku Moving Image Laboratory in San Sebastián. During these years, she made several short films such as “La gallina ciega” (2005), “Ámár” (2010), “Bajo la almohada” (2012), “Amore d’inverno” (2014), “Kutxa beltza” (2016), “La mujer ilustrada” (2023) and she produced “Berbaoc” (2007) and “Sailor’s Grave” (2014). In 2023, she directed “Sultana’s Dream,” her first feature film. Currently, Herguera combines her cinematographic work with her work as an Animation Professor at the Kunsthochschule für Median in Cologne, Germany.
Ahead of the 37th European Film Awards, Tara Karajica talks to Isabel Herguera about women in film, what she is doing – or not – next and, of course, her film “Sultana’s Dream” that is nominated for both European Animated Feature and European Film. “Sultana’s Dream” follows Inés, a Spanish artist, who lives in India and stumbles upon “Sultana’s Dream,” a science fiction story written by Rokeya Hossain in 1905. It describes “Ladyland,” a utopia in which women rule the country while men live in seclusion and are responsible for household chores. Fascinated by the story, Inés embarks on a journey across the country to search for the one place where women can live in peace.
How did you get into filmmaking and more specifically animation?
Isabel Herguera: I got into animation just by accident and by chance. I was a student at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf in Germany, and I was doing video art and installations and things like that and a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to assist him during an animation workshop that he was doing for children. That was my first interaction with animation, and I loved it from the first day, because I felt it was such a natural means of expression, and so much fun and easy, in a way – easy to figure out stories and to let fantasy and imagination go. This was in 1987 and I’ve been doing animation ever since.
How did Sultana’s Dream come about?
I.H.: Sultana’s Dream also happened by accident, like many things in life. Sometimes, it’s not so much of an accident, but I was in New Delhi, in India, finishing a film, and it was raining, and I stepped into an art gallery that had artwork from the Gond tribe, which I’m very much into. And I saw the book at the end of the hall. It was a red cover with two ladies piloting a spaceship. And, I fell in love with the cover. Then, I came closer, and I read “Sultana’s Dream, a feminist Utopia,” written in 1905 by Begum Rokeya (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain). And then, I read a little bit the synopsis, where it said, that it is a place for women to be safe, a place where men are behind the curtains and at home, taking care of the domestic chores, and where women have knowledge and are therefore in command of everything. And I thought: “Wow! This is a very revolutionary concept to be written in 1905 by somebody that did not have formal access to education!” And, in that very moment that I had the book in my hands, I decided I wanted to do something with it. I did not know what. And so, that was the beginning.
So, there are sort of personal elements in the story, because Inés is an animator like yourself, and she also goes to India, and is from the same town as you are…
I.H.: Many of the places that they are shown in the film are places I have been to and I have experienced first-hand. Many, many, many, many, many of the scenes over there are taken a little bit from self-experience. So, yes, it is a narration that is made out of bits and pieces of life and bits and pieces of fiction – everything mixed up.
There are many themes in the film related to feminism that you tackle like women in the world today and yesterday; how things have changed, but not really; women’s safety; fears; knowledge; how women can actually rule the world, but also submission; social stigmas of being women; gender inequality; identity; domination; transformation; the power of dreams… Can you elaborate on that?
I.H.: The book was like a lighthouse for me. It pointed me the way. And then, with the book, we started doing workshops with women in India in order to see the relevance of the story today. And, through these workshops, I got to know many groups of different women, from the widows that you see in the film to the handy ladies, which are the ones that drew Ladyland and all the journeys across India in order like to find the grave of Begum Rokeya and the women’s condition in general, but this was also like a journey into myself, a journey into self-consciousness. And, on this journey self-consciousness, I [encountered] all these things that you mention, topics that I discovered on my own while working on the film. One thing which is the centerpiece of all this is safety. It was something that spread across the languages, cultures and different social backgrounds we women all have in common. It’s sort of an alertness for danger, something that men lack or don’t develop the same way we do. And, that was the central element. And, in order to overcome this fear, what are the things that we need to reclaim? Or, where do we have to support ourselves? One is education, another one is equality and another and another and another… So, they are all pieces, which all belong to the same idea, which is to dream of a place where we could feel safe and where we could be equal. And, the script also was constructed in a way that some scenes evolved out of a personal experience while others were fictionalized. And then, once we had all these pieces, then we sew them together in order to form one single journey. But the pieces in themselves – many of which take inspiration in real life – were also conceived as elements of real life, because they have this credibility of self-experience.
Now that you talk about safety, I read an article about a study that said that the least safe place in the world for a woman is her own home, and this is so terrible today, in the 21st Century. So, roughly 120 years after the book was written, nothing has changed.
I.H.: Nothing. But now, the law is protecting us. I believe something that we all have to overcome is this idea that was a part of our upbringing like being proper, being quiet, being discrete. Ambition was not something that counted in the world of a woman, but that was part of growing up as a man. All these topics and preconceived ideas of how a woman has to be is something that we have to change in ourselves. But as much as we have to change men, we also have to change ourselves in order not to establish limits for ourselves; limits that come through education. They expect us to behave in a particular manner that maybe they don’t of little boys.
Do you believe in the preachings of the book and do you believe that, for instance, the film will maybe drive a social change, or maybe just even change the mindset a little bit?
I.H.: I don’t know if the film is going to change anything, but sometimes it will make us think. It will make us be more aware of or confront us with ideas. And, if you are confronted with an idea like a dream for a long time, it becomes more of a consciousness about it. For instance, things that I might have been quiet about some years ago, now I’m not quiet anymore and I respond. It’s these little things that make a big difference. But this is the labor of not just one film, but many films, yourself, everything that you read and your own consciousness.
Can you talk about the animation techniques? There are, I believe, three in the film…
I.H.: There is the regular 2D animation, with watercolors in the background. All the watercolors, all the backgrounds were done analogically by hand, and then scanned and composited in After Effects. The life of Rokeya was done with real shadow puppets that were directly animated under the camera. We used that technique in order to recreate the time when Rokeya grew up and probably shadow puppets were the sort of traditional form in which stories would be spread in the oral tradition. And then, we used the Mehndi technique that was done in all these workshops that we did with women in India throughout almost the entire production. And, those we used to recreate Ladyland, which I thought symbolically had a very beautiful meaning as that technique is used to decorate women’s bodies, the brides’ feet and hands before the wedding. So, we also thought that if we divided the film in small parts, then production would be easier and we could work in small teams, which meant we could avoid a little bit the industrial pipeline, which I was very afraid of because I come from short films, and I had never worked a feature film. The industrial part was the thing that I was afraid the most because it’s where I thought I would lose that atmosphere, that handmade kind of expression. But I was very lucky to work in a studio in Spain where they were very careful with and respectful of this artistic look. The 2D was done with them and it was the most challenging bit, also in terms of technique and labor.
I come from History and what struck a chord was the presence of Mary Beard in the film. Can you delve more into her involvement?
I.H.: I’m a big fan of Mary’s! Actually, Gianmarco Serra, who is my partner in life and co-writer, is very knowledgeable about the Classics. Me not so much, but through Mary Beard, I discovered the Classics and I was very, very grateful for all her books and documentaries. One day, I was walking in the Capitoline Museums in Rome and there she was with her husband, just by chance. I was so grateful to have met her there that I went and I told her: “Mary Beard, you are such a source of inspiration to me!” She was very nice and grateful. Later on, I discovered that she had written Women & Power: A Manifesto, this little booklet, with several instances in which she shows the situation of women throughout History, and then I found this speech of hers about when Penelope is kicked out, and I asked her if I could use the text in her voice for the film. And, she said yes. So, I thought it was very important for me to also point out certain instances in our Western culture and literature where a woman was also kicked out of place or mistreated by a man.
There have been many discussions about women in film in the past few years. What is your stand on the situation of women in film today? How is it in animation?
I.H.: In animation, the number of women filmmakers working in short films is maybe 50/50. In feature films and in independent feature films, the number of women directors is much higher than that of men. Men are probably in majority when it comes to more commercial or industrial animation, but women are much more of a figure when it comes to independent animations. Look at the works of Anca Damian, Florence Miaihle, Michaela Pavlátová or María Trénor. All these are references for me. They are all women that you don’t find so often in the most commercial animations, but you find them in the in the most independent ones. Why is that? Maybe it’s because in independent animation, you can adapt a little bit more to your way of living. You have kids, and you have to make time, and you have to almost make it from your home and you can figure out ways of production, which are much more adapted to your way of living. I also watched films made by women in animation and the type of animation is a little bit different. It’s not based on big action so much.
Do you have a favorite female filmmaker and a favorite film by a female filmmaker?
I.H.: Agnès Varda is a wonderful figure in the whole sense of the word – as a woman, as a filmmaker. But there are many, many female filmmakers I can think of right now in Spanish Cinema, like Isabel Coixet. In animation, there are many, many cases of filmmakers that are very much inspired and whose type of work is so persistent and so consistent throughout the years; people who have been working since probably the 1980s, and they continue to work on their independent films, without making any compromises, just continuing with their work. This is very inspiring to me.
What are you working on next?
I.H.: I’m accompanying the film, which requires a lot of care. I thought: “I’ll finish the film, and then I’m free for the next one.” And, it’s actually not like that. I finished the film and all of a sudden – the film works as a shield that doesn’t allow you to be disturbed by anything until it is over – everything that you have been postponing for so long comes, and this was my situation this past year. Everything that I had postponed is coming, and I have had no time to think. I’ve done little things, but not really thinking about the film, also probably because I need to take some distance in order not to repeat the same way of making films. I need it to be something challenging and new. So, right now, my head is working, but there is nothing concrete.
Photo credits: Courtesy of Isabel Herguera.
