For our 7th semester project, we created a series of three independent short films based on Magic Realism. Magic realism is a genre of narrative fiction that emerged in Latin America where the magical is revealed in a real world setting. The works of many Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez are considered to fall under it. Each animation has a particular starting point of either sound, image or text and explores a certain aspect of this genre.

Logline – An exploration of a moment of a girl spacing out while watching the rain.
Concept – This animation was supposed to be a visualization of the mental space of a girl zoning in and out of her physical surroundings, her mental trajectory stimulated by the sound of the rain. It is loosely based on the text "“Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo” by Márquez
Medium – 2D Photoshop animation.

I see Magic Realism as a celebration of the mundane and an attempt to see the possibility of magic and intrigue and mystery in everyday narratives, and it was this aspect of the genre that I explored in my work. The starting point for this was a sound piece we created from the story, according to which the visuals and narrative were developed.

Logline – A collaged animation of two contrasting visual narratives of colonial India.
Concept – The animation is meant to shatter the oriental image of India that was created by the British to reveal a different visual narrative of India that emerged during the freedom movement.
Medium – Photoshop animation using found images of 18th and 19th century colonial India.

For this phase, we were to make an animated loop based on a haiku using found images of certain aesthetic genres like 19th century photos. The starting point of this phase was image and the animation was supposed to focus on the crafting of the image and what it communicates. The aspect of magic realism that we explored was the fact that it is a predominantly post-colonial literary genre in which many writers have played with colonial history and its erasures in the content and style of their writing.

Logline - Bullied by peers for her academic achievements, a girl turns to an unlikely source of solace.
Description - Keya, an ordinary school girl is bullied by her peers for her good marks and is suffocated by the whirlwind of expectations that come from her being an academic achiever. However she turns to her drawing class and the act of painting for solace and her art teacher’s encouragement becomes her only form of confidence.
Medium - Photoshop 2D animatic.

The starting point of this piece was text. We went through writing exercises which resulted in a script being produced and its animatic being made. The aspect of magic realism that I explored was the literary technique of metaphor and allegory that magic realism employs to communicate certain experiences more effectively and tell larger truths subversively. I employed a simple metaphor of a hurricane to visually communicate the emotional experience of a child being suffocated by academic expectation and social ostracization.