Hotel Kalura
2021 · 5m · UK
Directed by Sophie Koko Gate
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
A woman walks into a hotel bar on the romantic island of Sicily, longing to be loved, in this surreal and sensual hand-drawn animation drenched in desire and erotic imagery.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Five minutes of glossy airbrushed flesh-textured wardrobe-drawn lockdown horniness on Sicily — Koko Gate's whole deal is gender-fluid sensual surrealism and it's distinct. Jarman Award nom confirms.
Sophie Koko Gate's gender-fluid airbrushed sensuality, drawn in a wardrobe during lockdown, won Ottawa Best Technique and earned Jarman Award nomination, which is exactly the recognition this distinctive voice deserves. Vimeo verification gate is a minor friction but expected.
Ottawa Animation Festival Winner Best Technique and Jarman Award 2023 nominee for 4:51 — hand-drawn in a wardrobe during lockdown with airbrushed flesh-textured forms is exactly the kind of constraint-as-style that gives an erotic animation its specific charge. Best Technique recognition tells me the craft is the point.
Reviews
If I had to describe Hotel Kalura in one word, it would be sultry – in the same way a late-night jazz solo feels after one too many cocktails: surreal, stylish, and smouldering with seduction.
All the sensuality of the work is honed and concentrated, with volumes of flesh and fluid with which characters are constructed breaking down into close-ups of skin, hair and mucus, while all the gender codes are merged and recombined.
Festivals
- Ottawa International Animation Festival 2022, Best Technique
- IndieLisboa International Film Festival 2022, Best Animation
- Animafest Zagreb 2022
- GLAS Animation Festival 2022