imagineNATIVE 26 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW! For a stop-motion short that will literally shake you down to the fiber of your being, sew yourself into the stop-motion yarn-mation short Kinku, written and directed by Segundo Fuerez. From Ecuador, Fuerez uses yarn instead of clay to make the figurines and backgrounds to animate. A little girl dreams of friendship and plays in the sun. She is kidnapped by a man with a gun and is taken captive.
A wonderful canine friend from the girl’s dreams arrives, where she is tied up. While the man is out with his gun, the ropes bounding the girl are gnawed through, so that she and her friend can escape. When the man gets back and finds his prisoner gone, he takes his gun out into the darkness to hunt the little girl and put her down…
“Fuerez doesn’t pull any punches with the heavy gravity of child trafficking.”
Kinku is very disturbed that something so inherently adorable can also be so dark. While instantly being visually attractive to small children, Fuerez also doesn’t pull any punches with the heavy gravity of the child trafficking portrayed. While not graphic, it also doesn’t hide the inevitable as to what happens to children who disappear. Not a happy ending basket at all, even if it is all macramé.
But Kinku isn’t a total bummer either, which is completely bizarre. There is a gleam of something at the end that isn’t hope, but it is something. There is also a question as to the level of symbolism being used. Is this an extra grim allegory for the environment? Is it going beyond the controversial subject to create something transcendental? Whatever it is, it is so pleasing to the eye that you want to eat it. Kinku is a heart-stopping six minutes of stop-motion that will have you hypnotized for a spell with a rumination that never ends.
"…a heart-stopping six minutes of stop-motion that will have you hypnotized..."
