Zürcher Nachrichten - Chilean film 'Bestia' depicts torture with animation

EUR -
AED 4.10877
AFN 78.431581
ALL 98.251873
AMD 432.069045
ANG 2.002001
AOA 1025.790015
ARS 1265.760499
AUD 1.745225
AWG 2.013547
AZN 1.926407
BAM 1.954755
BBD 2.260293
BDT 136.0073
BGN 1.953996
BHD 0.421659
BIF 3330.81957
BMD 1.118637
BND 1.454987
BOB 7.734969
BRL 6.296138
BSD 1.119452
BTN 95.653146
BWP 15.169569
BYN 3.663605
BYR 21925.286231
BZD 2.248678
CAD 1.564531
CDF 3210.488671
CHF 0.937974
CLF 0.027432
CLP 1052.704917
CNY 8.06129
CNH 8.064406
COP 4677.558463
CRC 567.921812
CUC 1.118637
CUP 29.643882
CVE 110.211507
CZK 24.922901
DJF 199.343445
DKK 7.460291
DOP 65.857741
DZD 148.926441
EGP 56.112067
ERN 16.779556
ETB 151.506447
FJD 2.542994
FKP 0.841068
GBP 0.842418
GEL 3.064872
GGP 0.841068
GHS 13.936737
GIP 0.841068
GMD 81.094677
GNF 9694.294728
GTQ 8.600403
GYD 234.20481
HKD 8.733524
HNL 29.113438
HRK 7.535583
HTG 146.318328
HUF 403.383838
IDR 18486.316272
ILS 3.959751
IMP 0.841068
INR 95.68318
IQD 1466.416154
IRR 47108.603425
ISK 144.695626
JEP 0.841068
JMD 178.444616
JOD 0.793556
JPY 163.318778
KES 144.666261
KGS 97.824466
KHR 4479.665544
KMF 492.619769
KPW 1006.729661
KRW 1563.698243
KWD 0.343976
KYD 0.932914
KZT 571.669976
LAK 24208.384456
LBP 100301.930367
LKR 334.136328
LRD 223.880329
LSL 20.304047
LTL 3.303044
LVL 0.676652
LYD 6.176002
MAD 10.392909
MDL 19.500838
MGA 5017.385326
MKD 61.482899
MMK 2348.632302
MNT 3999.288804
MOP 9.003487
MRU 44.363286
MUR 51.401274
MVR 17.283081
MWK 1941.06244
MXN 21.636905
MYR 4.791113
MZN 71.5021
NAD 20.304047
NGN 1790.92683
NIO 41.197978
NOK 11.647141
NPR 153.045033
NZD 1.903624
OMR 0.430678
PAB 1.119417
PEN 4.112202
PGK 4.650743
PHP 62.440062
PKR 315.272569
PLN 4.242269
PYG 8937.222768
QAR 4.080119
RON 5.105125
RSD 117.1826
RUB 89.967169
RWF 1614.758512
SAR 4.195839
SBD 9.345502
SCR 15.903441
SDG 671.743276
SEK 10.893506
SGD 1.452886
SHP 0.879073
SLE 25.394886
SLL 23457.259914
SOS 639.78661
SRD 40.718948
STD 23153.52847
SVC 9.795246
SYP 14543.800966
SZL 20.297423
THB 37.272924
TJS 11.591704
TMT 3.920823
TND 3.378645
TOP 2.619964
TRY 43.283826
TTD 7.602208
TWD 33.765833
TZS 3018.285235
UAH 46.427166
UGX 4085.816
USD 1.118637
UYU 46.637155
UZS 14530.233124
VES 104.438925
VND 29025.834923
VUV 134.294816
WST 3.093473
XAF 655.635847
XAG 0.034767
XAU 0.000352
XCD 3.023173
XDR 0.821792
XOF 655.638776
XPF 119.331742
YER 273.11528
ZAR 20.234556
ZMK 10069.087948
ZMW 29.895421
ZWL 360.200675
  • RYCEF

    0.1700

    10.7

    +1.59%

  • CMSC

    0.0210

    21.986

    +0.1%

  • RBGPF

    0.8100

    63.81

    +1.27%

  • BCC

    -0.5400

    90.2

    -0.6%

  • RIO

    0.0600

    62.09

    +0.1%

  • NGG

    2.3100

    69.74

    +3.31%

  • GSK

    0.3950

    36.615

    +1.08%

  • SCS

    -0.0750

    10.465

    -0.72%

  • VOD

    0.2200

    9.26

    +2.38%

  • CMSD

    0.0400

    22.3

    +0.18%

  • JRI

    0.1096

    12.7461

    +0.86%

  • BTI

    0.1200

    40.67

    +0.3%

  • RELX

    0.6700

    53.73

    +1.25%

  • BCE

    0.4700

    21.73

    +2.16%

  • BP

    -0.6650

    29.695

    -2.24%

  • AZN

    0.9100

    67.14

    +1.36%

Chilean film 'Bestia' depicts torture with animation
Chilean film 'Bestia' depicts torture with animation

Chilean film 'Bestia' depicts torture with animation

Nominated for this year's Oscars, Chilean short film "Bestia" (Beast) uses animation, an art form more often associated with children's movies, to deal with a macabre topic: the sexual torture of women.

Text size:

The 15-minute film about the life of Ingrid Olderock -- a particularly cruel agent of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet -- took 20 people three years to make.

It tells a story of the inner struggles of Olderock, the daughter of German Nazi sympathizers, who made it her life's work to psychologically break women prisoners, including using dogs to sexually assault them.

Olderock (1944-2001) worked at a detention center that specialized in the sexual torture of leftist Pinochet opponents.

"Bestia" employs the "stop motion" technique of photographing objects -- in this case dolls -- which are physically manipulated between frames. Those frames are then strung together in a series to create the impression of independent movement.

"Bestia" director Hugo Covarrubias, 44, talked to AFP about how he chose the topic -- and the medium -- to tell the story of one of the most sinister chapters of the Chilean dictatorship.

Q: Why Olderock?

A: She embodies the evil that reigned in Chile during the dictatorship... As a woman, she trained women to torture women.

A person so dedicated to breaking souls obviously has to have had her own broken at some point.

Olderock had many mental problems. She was a very paranoid woman, with a lot of trauma.

It (the film) is a psychological fiction, where we get inside her mind and try to show how all this mental trouble ends up representing an entire country. The trauma of a country (is seen) through the evil this woman represents.

Q: What is the role of her dog in the film?

A: One of the aspects we wanted to touch on was the intimate relationship with her dog.

She had three dogs, but we "fictionalized" that part and wanted to show the most important dog, which was Volodya, and little by little the film reveals what she does with the dog.

In reality, what she was doing was training dogs to commit torture, mainly to rape women.

Q: Why use stop-motion?

A: I’ve been working on this technique since 2005. It is basically what I know how to do. We like it because there is a plastic component, manual and analog, that allows us to create worlds that would be very difficult to create digitally.

We use miniature sets made of cardboard, and characters about 25 centimeters (10 inches) tall made with articulated steel, fabric and polyurethane.

Q: Why do you think the film has found acclaim abroad?

A: "Beast" stands out for the theme, the aesthetics, for the way in which this political topic is handled.

Also the genre: a psychological and political thriller that ended up being a short film that was quite different from the rest, which does not have a happy ending...

It is quite raw and powerful.

From time to time, people want this kind of power in a movie...

It causes different kinds of sensations, emotion and repulsion, it is a very strange experience. I think that the... sensations people experience with this short film -- I think it is what has made us get where we are.

Q: What does the Oscar nomination mean for you?

A: It gives more credibility to your film and obviously opens career doors for the film director and the team.

But the most important thing is the topic and the people who suffered this type of harassment.

---

Chile has three Oscars to date: Claudio Miranda won best photography for "Life of Pi" (2013), "Bear Story" (2014) won best animated short film, and "A Fantastic Woman" (2017) best foreign-language film.

"Bestia" has won prizes at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and the Guadalajara International Film Festival.

O.Krasniqi--NZN