Academics surrender to the dazzling craftsmanship and poetry of a piece in which the three-time Emmy-winning filmmaker has invested seven years in his PinkmanTV studio, financing it personally with the support of fellow creators.
While the world was watching the stars on the red carpet, a Spaniard won an Oscar. The Hollywood Academy, in an attempt to achieve a shorter ceremony, decided that this year eight statuettes would be left out of the gala. They were delivered an hour before and in the television broadcast they were reduced to a short video. Among them are categories as essential for cinema as montage and soundtrack, where Alberto Iglesias competed, who fell against Hans Zimmer from ‘Dune’. However, Alberto Mielgo from Madrid won the statuette for his animated short film ‘The Windshield Wiper’.
Mielgo was not the favorite since all the pools pointed to ‘Robin Robin’ as the winner, a piece from the Aardman studio that had the co-production and support of Netflix. However, academics gave in to the dazzling craftsmanship and poetry of ‘The Windshield Wiper’, in which the three-time Emmy-winning filmmaker has spent seven years in his PinkmanTV studio, personally financing it with the support of fellow creators. . The short lacks a plot to use. A character, the director’s alter ego, wonders about the meaning of love and we see different situations that exemplify it: a couple on the beach, a drunk in the street, a man ringing a bell…
Mielgo has cut his teeth as an entertainer all over the world since he left Spain at the age of 18. He has lived in London, Berlin, Tokyo and Los Angeles. He started in children’s animation films in Spain such as ‘The legend of the pirate Blackbeard’ and ‘El Cid: the legend’. He worked on Tim Burton’s ‘Corpse Bride’ and took over the art direction of the ‘Tron: Uprising’ series. He was hired for the artistic direction of ‘Spider-Man: a new universe’ although he was fired after two years due to artistic differences with Sony. A dazzling work of his, ‘The Witness’, is featured in the Netflix short series ‘Love, Death and Robots’.
‘The wiper’ was already selected in the Directors’ Fortnight at the last Cannes Festival. For this self-taught man from Madrid in 1979, who at the age of ten was already drawing 40-page comics, the Oscar means independence and the possibility of being able to continue carrying out his personal projects. For the 15 minutes of the film he employed more than 70 people. A lover of the classics of animated films and of Japanese authors, although reluctant to follow “the dictatorship of the aesthetics of Pixar and Disney”, Alberto Mielgo will continue to explore animation for adults without limits.
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