A surrealist journey through colors and shapes inspired by the poem Romance Sonámbulo by Federico García Lorca. Visual poetry in the rhythm of fantastic dreams and passionate nights inspired by the biomorphism of Joan Miró. [short film by Theodore Ushev.]
What a feature film is to the novel, the short film can be for the poem. A burst of ideas distilled into something almost indefinable, but rife with life and meaning. Drawing from such source material, animator Theodore Ushev transforms Romance Sonambulo by Federico García Lorca, one of Spain’s most important twentieth century poets, into a surrealist-inspired exploration of a sleepwalker’s dreams in his short Sonambulo / The Sleepwalker.
In translating the poem to pictures, Ushev drew heavily upon Joan Miró, another Spanish artist, for his signature biomorphic forms, geometric shapes, and semi-abstracted objects. Using a similar color palette, he juxtaposes surrealist shapes with simple, more recognizable ones like chickens, people, the moon, and more. Like Miró, the short film balances that feeling of spontaneity and stream of consciousness with precision and strong compositions, teeming with life while ebbing and flowing like waves upon the shore. Whatever narrative may exist is abstract and obscured by the complex shapes that bounce in and out of the frame only to bend, morph, and repeat.