Isabel Herguera is a Spanish artist, filmmaker, cultural manager, professor, and critic. She has won more than 50 awards at various international film festivals. She graduated from UPV-Bilbao, continued her studies at the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Ma ...

in 1988, and obtained a master's degree at

CalArts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the ...

. In her 1989 movies ''Safari'' and ''Song of the Round Trip'' animation, sculpture and video were merged and together created a special work of art. In 1994, she founded an animation studio in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. In 2003, she returned to Spain from Los Angeles. In 2003–2011, she was the director of Animac, the International Festival of Animated film of Catalonia in Lleida. She also coordinated the motion picture laboratory of the Arteleku art centre in Donostia-San Sebastian. Over the years, she has served as chair and jury member of various international film festivals. In 2005 she started as a teacher at the

National Institute of Design The National Institutes of Design (NID) are a group of autonomous public design institutes in India, with the first institute established in 1961 in Ahmedabad. The other NIDs are located in the cities of Kurukshetra, Amaravati, Jorhat and Bho ...

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ), also spelled Amdavad (), is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. As a guest animation professor, she worked at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. In 2017 she became a professor of the animation department in Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Germany. In 2012, she became one of the 12 most celebrated Basque filmmakers and directed one chapter of ''Kalebegiak'', a movie that comprised 12 different perspectives on

San Sebastián San Sebastián, officially known by the bilingual name Donostia / San Sebastián (, ), is a city and municipality located in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. It lies on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, from the France–Spain border ...

. Herguera's first feature film, ''

Sultana's Dream ''Sultana's Dream'' is a 1905 Bengali feminist utopian story in English, written by Begum Rokeya, also known as Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, a Muslim feminist, writer and social reformer from Bengal. It was published in the same year in Madras-base ...

'', was released in 2023. The story is based on a 1905 dystopian fairy-tale by Bengali social activist Begum Rokeya. In this movie she also combined different techniques to underline and emphasize the differences between storylines — watercolour, cut-outs of the shadow theatre and

Mehndi Mehndi () is a form of temporary skin decoration using a paste created with henna. In the West, mehndi is commonly known as henna tattoo, although it is not a permanent tattoo. Mehndi is a popular form of body art in South Asia and resembl ...

. While it was still in the project stage, the film won the 2022 TorinoFilmLab Audience Design Award of the European Work in Progress in Cologne platform and received a €378,000 grant from the Spanish Film Institute.

Filmography

* Safari (1989); * Song of a Round Trip (1989); * La Gallina Ciega (2005); * Ámár (2010); * Under the Pillow (2012 short); * Winter Love (2015); * Sailor's Grave (2016) * ''

(2023).

References

Sources

* * 1961 births Living people Spanish film directors Film directors from the Basque Country (autonomous community) University of the Basque Country alumni Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni California Institute of the Arts alumni {{Spain-film-director-stub