Jul 22, 2020

Exclusive Short Premiere: "Q" by Roberto Biardi

Uma Thurman drinks heavily, Harvey Keitel pulls out a gun, and Hitler's head is cut in half. And Quentin Tarantino watches it all calmly, unaffected by the mayhem he has created.

"Welcome to Q," Roberto Biardi's dazzling homage to the director. The film runs through a postmodern hodgepodge of key scenes and characters from Tarantino's filmography. Exclusive premieres below:

The film's style is immediately recognizable to anyone who has seen Biardi's work. A parade of gruesome imagery, restrained palettes, and diabolical morphological changes: ...... The animator has applied this approach to everything from Hitler ("H") to Italian demagogue Beppe Grillo ("Beppeo Lenzalvinillo") to erotic Japanese prints ("Shunga"). His work revels in animation's ability to destabilize the public image of these popular or populist subjects.

Based in Turin, Italy, Biadi works alone in animation, but has formed a close creative partnership with sound designer Enrico Ascoli, the only person credited on "Q." Below, Biadi and Ascoli talk about how they work together, what Tarantino means to them, and why the violence in his films is so sweet. Quentin Tarantino should be honored that you made a film about him.

Roberto Biardi: Oh, not quite. My first short was about Hokusai and his Shunga masterpieces, and the one about Grillo and Trump was really small medicine. My work explores stories and tries to give the audience a different perspective of perception. I create moving portraits of people who are the stories themselves, which is why they almost always explode.

It doesn't matter if they are good guys or bad guys. I don't know if Quentin needs to be flattered, but if he sees this, I hope he enjoys it. [Q-

Beardy: I saw "Pulp Fiction" and went to see "Reservoir Dogs" the next day. I was impressed with Quentin's alphabet. The aesthetics, the music, the dialogue, the quotes from things I love. It all served his immense ability to tell and develop a story.

But while working on "Q," I never watched his film again. I was so focused on tying the separate fragments together. I needed to see his cinematography as a whole, not as stand-alone films.

Enrico and Roberto, you have worked together on many films.21]

Biadi: I love working with Enrico. I first met him after we had made a couple of short films together. I would finish a drawing and send him annotations or really small things or ideas and he would finish his work and it was always much better than what I had in mind.

In fact, once I finished the animation, I would totally hate what I did until Enrico put his magic in it. His work never follows my work.

Enrico Ascoli: In Italy, very few people do sound for animated films, especially independent short films with no budget. My debut in animation was many years ago with Donato Sansone's first short film, Videogioco. Donato is a reference for young directors in our country, and through him they often ask me for advice on their work.

Roberto came to me in this way and I immediately fell in love with his crazy morphing skills.

Roberto, you have an impressive style. Your forms are always morphing and there are no difficult cuts. how did you develop the visuals for "Q"? Is this approach similar to your previous work? Sometimes the animation comes spontaneously from an empty space, sometimes it follows a morphing that has already begun. I have a rough idea of the development and then fill it in with everything that seems legitimate.

For "Q," I got incredible scenes and ideas from his work, so I decided not to follow the chronology of his films, but rather his personal feeling about filming.

The beginning is unique, but still realistic (in a pulpy sense). Single scenes are not transformed much and retain a certain character. In "Kill Bill" it began to become more and more free. Here the morphing is stronger and everything is more blended. He began to change reality through cinematography. Everything (in "Kill Bill") points to Beatrix killing Hitler.

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin sees himself changing reality through cinematography. I just shot a scene in the movie with a rotoscope and I have nothing to add. Then I added a lot of little things that popped into my head while I was drawing, like his love for his feet. He loved the number "8" because I couldn't make it 8 minutes or 8 seconds.

Enrico, you decided to remix Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang" from the iconic music of Tarantino films.12]

Ascoli: When I was a kid, my parents had a record player and I listened to a dozen records obsessively. One of them was the Italian version of "Bang Bang" sung by Dalida. It was a very dark and sad song, and every time I listened to it I was lost in strange fantasies.

Then "Kill Bill" came out. I liked that movie terribly, but unfortunately it wiped out the privileged and sentimental place that "Bang Bang" had in my memory and replaced it with a popular Hollywood icon. Now, when I think about Tarantino, that song comes to mind, and vice versa.

Over the years, I have come to realize that I don't like at all the way movies appropriate and cannibalize musical works and bind them to their place in collective memory in irreversible and totalitarian ways. My use of "Bang Bang" in Roberto's film is less a remix of Nancy Sinatra's classic than it is a cry of my broken memory.

Tarantino's films are very violent, and "Q" reflects that. 20]

Beardy: Tarantino's violence is pure sweetness. It is like using strong red in a painting because it is so pure and necessary to the development of his story. I don't think there is much difference between depicting violence in live action and in animation.