Havana had to be a tad warmer, Paris a little more colourful and New York a bit colder, because it is winter when Chico visits his Rita. Even after six years of work, the Spanish draughtsman and designer Javier Mariscal kept polishing his first all-night animation film Chico y Rita till the very last moment. The film, full of jazz and Afro-Cuban music, about the love between a Cuban pianist and singer, is screened for the first time at an animation festival here at HAFF, and Mariscal himself will attend and explain how he and director Fernando Trueba and Tono Errando made the film. Mariscal wanted more: more characters, more action and more violence, but the director dissuaded him from it. ‘Fernando is a good person. He doesn’t like violence.’ In his presentation, Mariscal will explain, talking, singing and dancing, how he and two hundred associates shaped the film.

This program screened as part of HAFF 2010