April 2013-15
Short Film
El sol como un gran animal oscuro is a short film by Christina Felisgrau and Ronnie Rivera. The film, commissioned by O, Miami and produced by Borscht Corp, is inspired by the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik.
The film was selected to appear in the Sundance Film Festival Shorts Competition in 2015. It also appeared in numerous other film festivals, including the AFI Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, and Philadelphia Film Festival, and it won the Animation Jury Award at the 2015 New Orleans Film Festival.
Rivera created a limited edition zine with Pizarnik's poetry that was passed out at Sundance. (Images of the zine are in the photo carousel.)
The film was commissioned by O, Miami as part of a suite of "poetry films" made by Borscht, a Miami-based filmmaking collective.
The point of the commissions was to make short films adapted from poems that didn't involve the actual reading/recitation of the poem itself. In other words, to make short films that made poetic leaps away from the source material.