Lolos (Boobs): Interview with Marie Valade
In our latest episode of Animation One-To-Ones we welcome Quebec-based filmmaker Marie Valade, whose recent film Lolos (Boobs), is presently screening at both the Toronto International Film Festival and Bristol’s Encounters Festival this month, having premiered earlier this year at Annecy.
Both equally poignant and witty, the film sees a young woman drawn in ink who is forced to come to terms with paper breasts that appear on her chest and lead her into increasingly unusual situations. Her new assets see her navigating a mixed-media world of anxieties concerning womanhood, female rivalries, the male gaze as well as motherhood and sickness, rendered through a striking combination of rotoscopy, 2D animation and cutout stop-mo.
Boobs is both a comic and dark journey that explores a woman’s love-hate relationship for her body and her femininity. It highlights the powerful symbolism that breasts evoke for everyone.
Having studied Film Animation at Montreal’s Concordia University, Marie would go on to direct the short film Interoculus as part of the National Film Board of Canada‘s Hothouse apprenticeship program. She has since worked on all manner of animation projects from shorts features, spanning a variety of traditional frame by frame animation techniques including pixilation, stop-motion and 2D animation.
As well as continuing to work in animation Marie is co-director of Festival Stop Motion Montreal, whose 15th edition takes place September 10th-19th 2021. For more information visit stopmotionmontreal.com/
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TIFF festivalgoers can catch Lolos/Boobs in Short Cuts Programme 5 which screens September 14th at 8pm EDT (Canada only) and September 15th at 6pm EDT (worldwide).
Encounters passholders can see the film as part of the festival’s genre programme Late Lounge 2 until the end of the month.
For more information on this year’s Festival Stop Motion Montreal visit stopmotionmontreal.com and to see more of Marie’s work visit cargocollective.com/mariev