Juan Pablo Zaramella Preps Season 2 of ‘Tiniest Man in the World,’ Finishes ‘The Way Things Are’
ANNECY, France — Argentine stop-motion creator Juan Pablo Zaramella has finished the first 26 much-awaited episodes of “The Way Things Are,” a stop-motion TV series produced at his studio, JPZtudio. Twenty six more episodes are scheduled to be finished by the end of the year.
Zaramella was Oscar-shortlisted for his 2011 short “Luminaris” which won the Fipresci Prize and Audience Award at Annecy. The French festival devoted a special program to Zaramella in 2010.
In March, Guinness organization stated the six-minute long “Luminaris” to be the most awarded short film in history, scoring a total of 324 kudos.
Currently, Zaramella is writing his feature debut, a futuristic tale kicking off in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the feature, “Some beings discover the limits of the world where they live. And so far the main character is a female. It’s all I can announce now,” Zaramella told Variety.
“Humor is going to be present again, as in all my works. It’s a part of my personality and my brand. And this feature will be made in the most pure possible stop-motion. I don’t want any digital intervention beyond image stabilization and other basic aspects,” he added.
A stop-motion specialist, Zaramella concluded: “Current CGI has no limits. But stop-motion does. I used to work with limits. I live in Argentina, and within these limitations I always found a way to boost creativity through the stop-motion, which in spite of the dominant CGI, is experiencing a brilliant period.”
Zaramella is also in talks to get the greenlight for a second season of his stop-motion “Tiniest Man in the World,” a production of Les Films De L’Arlequin, JPL Films and Can Can Club which took best series award at Spain’s Canary Island-based Quirino Awards, held for the first time in April.
The second season is being backed by Sistema Nacional de Medios Publicos, a state body that oversees Argentine pubcaster Canal 7 and other media properties.
In “The Way Things Are,” with a peculiar eye and humor for scrutinizing humble domestic objects and establishing analogies with human beings, Zaramella depicts scenes between two sockets siblings finally meeting, a candle in psychoanalyst therapy and a dialogue between two hanging bras.
One-minute chapters hook in a formidable capacity for synthesis developed in Zaramella’s early works doing graphic humor vignettes.
The director’s latest short, “Heroes,” produced by JPZtudio was premiered at the recent Animafest Zagreb.
Pictured: “Heroes”
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