A journey to the origins of cinema with Miguel Herrero

Herrero is now combining his two passions in his next movie. chiaroscurois a documentary feature film, mostly animated, about the origins of cinema and the audio-visual world from prehistory to the early 19th century.

“People have a hard time believing that before cinema was audiovisual.he thinks it all started with him, but magic lantern -the leading device of the cinematograph- born in the 17th century it was three centuries and it was like a television »explains the filmmaker from Sax, “visual and audio and Earlier gadgets capable of creating motion pictures That doesn’t take away from the cinema, either. It existed centuries ago and it was possible to do with them. travelsspecial effects, multiple projections, rear projections, rear projections. These were very new old ways.”

blacksmith talking optical boxes or New Worldpanopticon polyoramas, magic lanterns…devices that reflect images through hand-painted and often colored plates that normally accompany them live music or narration and transporting people to distant places, reflecting landscapes, biblical scenes, phantasmagorical, horror, or humor. “People have seen these shows first then with traveling artists until they became local and they saw them in their home,” says Herrero.

Whoever owns a few of these tools and lots of optical binoculars will have all this stuff and original equipment. recreate images via animation and “to show what the people saw at that time”, a hundred or two hundred years ago. These scenes were filmed by animators such as: Manuel Ferri, Álvaro Quinto Abellán, Sofia Herrero Gil, Marta Lluch and José Francisco Sánchez.

interviews

chiaroscuro It will offer a historical tour of these predecessors of cinema, right down to the Lumière brothers and described in chronological orderFrom the shadows of prehistory to the last century and for the documentary part, the cooperation of many institutions and organizations and a dozen interviews with experts from France and Spain cinema, illusionism and collecting.

Among them are the French archaeologist and anthropologist. Jean Clots and rock art expert, advisor to the French Ministry of Culture and General Curator of Heritage. But the French prehistoricist, filmmaker, and writer are also involved. Marc Azema; illusionists Juan Tamariz, Juan Luque, Sergi Buka and Gonzalo Albiñana; writer and expert in the cultural history of illusionism Ramon Mayrata; Director of the Madrid Film Museum, Juan Carlos Jimenez Ruiz; teacher and writer Francisco Javier Frutos Estebanfrom the University of Salamanca -media archaeologist-; Maite Conesadirector of the Castilla y León Film Library; jordi pons, director of the Girona Film Museum-Tomàs Mallol Collection; picker Josep Maria Queralto; doctor and collector Thomas Camacho and photographer and collector Jose Luis Mur.

The idea stems from the investigations conducted by Herrero himself. author of more than a dozen books who, about it, published hallucination Magic, illusionism and cinemaWith a foreword by Juan Tamariz, Necromancy and media archeology, gadgets to excite Y Robertson’s Complete Works. He also received the Mervyn Heard Award from the British Magic Lantern Society for his research.

Film chiaroscuroSelected from the feature film projects in the past DocsValencia, gravitational equator and awaits its premiere next year.