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courtesy of Disney/Pixar Animated <strong>Italian</strong> By Maria Garcia Nonno, Papa and Bambino in “La Luna” If your childhood memories include Saturday afternoons at the neighborhood movie house, then your first film was a short—a cartoon, a serial, or a silent comedy “one reeler.” For Enrico Casarosa, it was Osvaldo Cavandoli’s “La Linea” cartoons, which he watched on <strong>Italian</strong> TV as a boy. Cavandoli’s young character and the unexpected events he encounters pop up from la linea, a line drawn across a colored background. The cartoons have universal appeal, yet the character’s temperament is manifestly <strong>Italian</strong>. Casarosa’s childhood in Genoa, and Cavandoli, inspired his first film, “La Luna,” an animated short. “I grew up with my dad and my grandfather, and they never got along,” the writerdirector says in a phone interview Enrico Casarosa Draws on His <strong>Italian</strong> Boyhood to Make an Oscar-Nominated Film from Pixar Animation Studios. “Growing up, I often felt stuck between the two.” As a storyboard artist at the California studio, Casarosa draws the first images of what become animated shorts or feature-length films. “I thought it would be interesting to tell a story to kids about finding their own way when people are telling them to do things in different ways,” he says. Casarosa’s boy protagonist in “La Luna” accompanies his quarrelsome father and grandfather to their unusual job and, at a crucial moment, makes a unique contribution to their labors. The Oscar-nominated short opens with a glimpse of the prow of a battered wooden boat. Her name, La Luna, is printed on the starboard side. “The thing that interested me about that shot is that it was great to see the boat come in and be so close to the water,” Casarosa says, “because then I would be able to show the kid, yet not the parent and grandparent who are taller.” Desiring a timeless, fairy-tale quality for the boat, Casarosa went home to observe the boatmakers of Genoa, who believe souls are granted only to vessels crafted of wood. Afterward, as he sketched La Luna, he thought of her as his “fourth character.” The film begins in the evening, just before the moon rises. Stars twinkle in the background, and the ultramarine hue of sea and evening sky bathe the frame. The seven-minute short, which premiers in theaters this fall along with the animated feature “Brave,” began with ON FILM WWW.NIAF.ORG <strong>Ambassador</strong> 55
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