Mafalda, the Argentine girl who questions how the world works, will have a television series. Quino’s most famous creation is the protagonist of a project directed by the Oscar winner for ‘The Secret in Their Eyes’, Juan José Campanella. “We know that we will not be able to elevate Mafalda, because she cannot be any higher,” he said in a letter about the production that he considers “by far, the greatest challenge of my life.”
The Argentine is the director, screenwriter and showrunner of the project that Netflix has just announced. The streaming giant has partnered with Campanella’s studio, Mundoloco CGI, responsible for the animated film ‘Metegol’. “I was seven or eight years old when the first collection of Mafalda strips was published in the form of a booklet. My parents read the strip and told me that I wouldn’t understand it. What an insult. What a challenge. I ran to buy it and I still remember coming up the Melo ravine while I was reading it, bursting out laughing and admitting that, indeed, there were strips that I didn’t understand,” he comments on the comic.
Decades later, when he was immersed in the production of ‘Metegol’ (2013), he met Joaquín Salvador Lavado, ‘Quino’. “The master came to visit our production office. There were almost 200 artists from different generations and God had come to all of us. I remember that it was that day that ‘Quino’ tried, for the first time, to draw with a digital pencil. A giant like him who had inspired generations of cartoonists with his stroke, and many more humorists with his sense of irony and sharp commentary, was giving shape to a stroke, but like never before, without ink or paper. His enthusiasm was that of a child with a new toy, asking dozens of questions. The enthusiasm and curiosity of someone who never thought he knew everything.”
The challenge of turning Mafalda into “an animation classic”
Campanella, who also directed some episodes of the series Law and Order, maintains that the challenge is not in the public that admires ‘Quino’, but in connecting with new generations. “How can we bring his wit, his mordacity, to the children who today grow up on digital platforms? How can we, in short, transfer one of the greatest works in the history of graphic humor to the audiovisual language?” he asked after the visit to the animation studio.
The director recalls that reading Mafalda meant going to the dictionary from time to time, and he believes that with the series he will seek to reach different audiences. “Every new word I learned came with the reward of a new laugh. Soon I was already one of Mafalda’s gang. I can quote many jokes from memory, but as I am facing this enormous challenge today, I am not going to start with spoilers.”
The creation of Joaquín Salvador Lavado, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 88, has been a high bar and now he hopes to pay tribute to her. “A dozen years after that unforgettable visit, we face this challenge. Nothing more and nothing less than turning Mafalda into an animated classic.”
The comic strip he published in the mid-60s and the reflections that the Argentinean proposed have not lost their relevance. Mafalda is part of cultural heritage and is represented in both Mendoza and Oviedo, Spain. Every day, in San Telmo, the neighborhood that inspired ‘Quino’, hundreds of tourists pose with the statue of Mafalda. At the request of its creator, Susanita and Manolito have accompanied her on the bench since 2014. “It is our obligation to preserve Quino’s humor, timing, irony and observations,” said the Argentinean.
‘Quino’ in San Telmo, Buenos Aires.
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