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Indietro
SEGNI New Generations Festival 2021
Screening
From 31 October to 30 November

Animati in Video | Pedro’s

Pedro falls asleep and dreams he is on a flying boat ferried by dragonflies. His going is peaceful as he flies over uninhabited landscapes and plays with the moon, until he crosses a bridge over a glowing abyss. The flames turn into waves and Pedro finds himself in the middle of the sea, from whose waters a towering mountain emerges. The small boat is swept away by a vortex of water and sinks. All seems lost, but… beyond the other side of the vortex, Pedro finds himself on a meadow. Suddenly a strange forest appears from nowhere and a word never heard before echoes through the air: alebrije! The trees transform into the heads, legs and bodies of animals that compose themselves in the air in infinite combinations. Pedro, terrified, flees and comes to a meadow where there is a tree with multicoloured fruit. This time it is he who is transforming: his face is turning into a skull! But a hummingbird comes out of the tree and carries him to safety from the nightmare: Pedro wakes up. The story is inspired by an event that actually happened to Pedro Linares, a master of Mexican papermaking. At the age of 30, the master was in a coma for a long time and during his unconsciousness he had visions of monstrous figures: the alebrijes. His delirious dream is depicted as a Dantean journey into a world without people inhabited by disturbing, chimera-like animals. The setting recalls the eighth bolgia where Ulysses serves his sentence. Pedro/Ulysses finds himself in the middle of the sea where a mountain rises (the Purgatory), but unlike the Homeric hero he does not die swept away by the waters. He arrives in a netherworld inhabited by monstrous creatures, reminiscent of the symbols with which the divine speaks to men. Fleeing from these disturbing presences, he arrives at the Garden of Eden from whose tree a hummingbird (a messenger between the world of the living and the world of the dead in Mexican culture) emerges and brings him back to life. His journey into the nightmare is a kind of catharsis that brings him back to life.

“Animati in Video” is a contest aimed at figure theatre artists and companies, promoted by the International Puppet and Figure Theatre Festival “Arrivano dal Mare!” in cooperation with five other Italian figure theatre festivals. The theme of the 2021 edition was “the four elements and the spheres of the human”.

Find the videos of the 2021 contest winners on segninonda.org: Pedro’s by Barbara Veloce won second prize.