This film tells the story of different forest animals who thrive by working together and taking care of each other. One day, a hunter from the city comes to the forest. He captures the animals and takes them back to the city, locking them up in the zoo. Life is sad in the zoo, but the animals do not give up. They make a plan to get home with the help of a young collaborator on the outside.

Released in 1974, the simple but beautiful animation is drawn from Mauricio Gatti’s own story of political imprisonment in Uruguay in the early 1970s. At that time, Gatti sent drawings to his daughter Paula that were later published as a children’s book under the same name. In 1974, Alfredo Exhaniz, Gabriel Peluffo and Walter Tournier, under the name Grupo Experimental de Cine (Experimental Cinema Group), turned the book into the animated film we see today.

This edition of LEO Filmklubb is organized in collaboration with the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) on the occasion of OCA's exhibition Actions of Art and Solidarity, on display at Kunstnernes Hus through 21 March 2021 (temporarily closed following public coronavirus regulations). The film, itself a solidarity document produced within the context of dramatic political upheaval in Latin America in the 1970s, is a good companion to many of the works in the show.

OCA and Kunstnernes Hus thank curator María Berríos for introducing us to the film, and the film's authors and Cinemateca Uruguaya for permissions to show the film.

Picture above: Mauricio Gatti, En la selva hay mucho por hacer, book (detail), 1977