Animated Space: Moving image, place and identity

This presentation will map Pedro Serrazina’s journey from architecture to animation. Using early sketches and inspirational references from comics, we will look at the animated background and the space of the screen as narrative elements. Through short films to music videos and site-specific installation work, we will discover how, instead of focussing on characters, we can use animated space to reflect on ideas of identity and create a very personal approach to animation.

Pedro Serrazina is an award-winning director, senior lecturer and animation researcher. His first short, “Tale about the cat and the moon”, premiered internationally at the Cannes Film Festival ‘96 and is still regularly screened in retrospectives and festivals. His work has been exhibited and published internationally, ranging from film, site-specific installations, to music videos and academic projects.

Serrazina is interested in the interconnections between architecture, public space, documentary and animation, and his practice-based PhD was dedicated to the use of animated space as a tool to reflect on social space.

He is co-editor of the “Animation Practice, Process and Production” journal, and of the IJFMA journal special editions “Animated Space: engaged animation for the space(s) we live in” and “Truth of Matter: process and perception in expanded animation practice”. A member of the Society for Animation Studies and Ecstatic Truth (a symposium dedicated to animation and documentary practices), Serrazina was the artistic director of the 45th edition of Cinanima Festival, and is currently preparing his next film, "What remains of us".

In his spare time, he is an eager collector of records and graphic novels.