Hidden

Sheffield International Documentary Festival
2002

Hidden - an animated documentary (Gömd - en animerad dokumentär)
David Aronowitsch, Hanna Heilborn, Mats Johansson

Lydia Esler

The directors David Aronowitsch, Hanna Heilborn and Mats Johansson explore a new area of documentary filmmaking in Hidden. This short film examines the plight of a twelve year old boy, Giancarlo, who has been in hiding for two years in Sweden having fled his homeland of Peru, where he lived on the streets. He lives in fear of deportation and is unable to make friends at school. His story is told in animation combined with voice over in a eight minute documentary.

All of the films in the Sheffield International Documentary Festival have something to set them apart from conventional documentary storytelling, but Hidden is striking from the first instant. One hears everything the subjects talk about and can see them, without actually seeing them. The boundaries of the animated medium are limitless: Every situation of the subject's life can be exploited because, in reality, nothing is exploited. It is all 'hidden' behind the cartoon.

The use of animated characters gives the subjects anonymity. Here again, the realms of what documentary is and is not able to expose is extended, because the characters are willing to explain more about their situation and the audience quickly accepts the caricatures as 'real'. The structure of the documentary introduces them through an animated reconstruction of an interview situation, so the 'real' context of how the documentary is conducted is exposed within the animation. Even lighting effects and atmosphere are depicted in the animation of the interview room, immediately giving reality and credibility to the animation.

The sound levels on the film were heightened, making the voiceovers sterile. This drew attention to the fact that the only reality existing in the film was the 'hidden' meeting of the documentarist and the subject. While the caricatures have a personality within the cartoon, the voiceovers seem flattened by the acoustics of the interview room and subtlety is lost in the delivery. Facial expression cannot be exposed in detail with caricatures. After this introductory scene additional source material is added and images move into the realms of creativity: just as with archive footage or reconstructions in more conventional documentaries, the story of the character is depicted by animations of situations he describes. It creates a narrative drama of the events, building interest and tension.

The film certainly succeeds in entertaining, though it is not immediately apparent that the film requires the viewer to think - perhaps because one is concentrating on subtitles, or perhaps because of the novelty of the filmic style. However with hindsight one is forced to ponder over the film, because it asks the viewer to decode its meaning from a virtual world and to translate it into the world in which we live. By extending the limits and possibilities of the content through animation, the viewer must question whether those limits are reached in our world. It is evident from the story that they are, which makes the subject matter all the more disturbing.

The title of the film describes far more than the boy in hiding. Its hidden power challenges our own reality, as well as making us reflect upon the nature of the 'real' world in which we live. A poignant non-reality made into a powerful reality. The hidden power of cartoon should be more fully utilised in the depiction of documentaries.

Dolan Cummings

Hidden raises important questions about the nature of documentary. Can an animation be a documentary at all? Do we have to see something to believe it?

In any case, the motivation for using animation here was, at least partly, technical rather than philosophical. Hidden is about 12-year-old Giancarlo, a Peruvian refugee living in Sweden. As an illegal immigrant, he lives with the constant threat of deportation, and so his identity must be concealed.

Obviously this could have been done by more conventional means such as blurring or shadow. By making the film as a cartoon, the directors emphasise the childish pathos of the story rather than its political context. Giancarlo's avatar has huge watery eyes that demand sympathy rather than understanding.

The combination of animation with real voices and various other effects makes for an engaging 8 minutes, and technically there is no reason that a longer film could not use similar techniques. But Hidden rests too heavily on sentimentality to act as a real test of a new documentary genre.