Darwin's Notebook
2020 · 9m · Switzerland
Directed by Georges Schwizgebel
Genres: animation, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A dialogue-free animated interpretation of a real historical episode in which three Tierra del Fuego natives were taken from their homeland in 1829 and transported to London, where they were educated in Western civilization before being returned by the British in 1833.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Schwizgebel painting Fuegians abducted to London in his trademark morphing acrylic-on-cel — a master at work on a brutal historical episode handled without dialogue. Pedigree and subject align.
Georges Schwizgebel is one of the great living animation masters — his hand-painted acrylic-on-cel morphing is an entire grammar unto itself, and the Tierra del Fuego subject matter (the FitzRoy Fuegians, surely) is historically charged. The Vimeo gate is annoying; the artist is non-negotiable.
Schwizgebel's hand-painted acrylic-on-cel work with physically impossible camera moves and seamless morphs is one of animation's most singular signatures — applied to the 1829 Tierra del Fuego abduction story with natives in color and English world in black-and-white is exactly the formal choice you'd want. Nine minutes from a master.
Reviews
A penetrating look into the devastating results of the era's colonization and clash of cultures, with frames filled with kinetic vibrance as the brush strokes move.
Schwizgebel's filmography stretches back to the 1970s and includes decades of short films that have shaped the language of animated storytelling, and now in his eighties, he represents a rare kind of filmmaker.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2021
- Hiroshima Animation Season 2022, Grand Prix
- Swiss Film Awards 2021, Best Animation Film