Isaac David Quesada

What is it that allows a viewer to disappear, to get lost in a story told on a screen? It is the question that from a very young age led me to analyze every movie I watch, and that gave rise to a fascination for cinema in me. My childhood was marked by a motor problem that, despite limiting my movements, led me to develop my creativity through conversations with other children about movies and television series and, above all, my own ideas. Also, coupled with the pleasure that storytelling has given me since then, the films and cartoons that filled my childhood awakened in me the desire to create fantastic worlds and situations with my own films.
I directed my education towards that purpose, studying a baccalaureate with a technical career in communication, and later a technical career in photography at the Active School of Photography, at the same time that I was taking diplomas at the CUEC and collaborating in CCC projects as a production assistant. Later, I complemented my education with a Bachelor of Audiovisual Arts at the University of Guadalajara and more recently, parallel to my job growth, I studied a degree in Graphic Design in order to focus my training on animation.
As a filmmaker, I intend to take advantage of the vast social and emotional potential offered by the film medium to communicate ideas and emotions, through the correct use of the tools that make up the cinematographic process. On the way to filmmaking, I have taken diverse routes, sometimes disparate from each other, such as the advertising industry, and the cultural sphere, and the contrast between their approaches, goals and specific particularities has enriched and helped develop the personal style and vision that permeates my work.
In collaboration with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), I have developed documentary and animated audiovisual content that brings the population closer to their heritage using empathy as a creative engine. The personal challenge has been to dilute the institutional formalisms that end up emotionally distancing the viewer, turning each video into a story with characters that serve as a guide and an avatar for the viewer, through the theme being addressed.
These characters range from the same restorers, archaeologists, historians and other specialists for documentary videos, to animated characters, specifically designed to illustrate topics such as the creation of Mayan censers, the theft of cultural heritage and the work done by heritage curators.
As part of the VICE production teams, I have contributed to the making of web series such as TrasEscena: Chile, in whose 6 episodes the most relevant musical genres in that country are broken down; and more recently in Partylegends: Radiohead, an account of the misfortunes that the English band went through on their first visit to Mexico, narrated by Camilo Lara. With an approach similar to that used in the work carried out with the INAH, from the use of animation the Mexico of 1994 and the characters are recreated within that specific temporal context.
The advertising field, more generally, has been a frequent source of work since the beginning of my working life, an area in which I have mostly worked in the post-production area. From this experience I have learned about workflows, production and direction, a panorama that, added to my studies at the University of Guadalajara, prompted me to create my own projects and productions.
One last link in my education and experience is the work I have done in collaboration with international creators, thanks to the digital proximity that current technology allows us. I have animated videos through which the government of Canada broke down to each municipality the use of its economic resources for the Thurismedia production house, I participated in an animation for the digital medium TED - Ed made by the English animation house Movult, I designed and animated two animated sequences for the feature documentary “A Pebble in the Pond” coordinated by director Paul Howard from California, and I fully animated the short film “The Gospel of Damian” supervised from New York by director Colin Kornfeind. This way of working reinforces an ideology of efficiency and economy in production, rooted in my training since my first student jobs.
I feel a responsibility to entertain the audience with pieces worked with discipline and seriousness, since from its origin the cinema provides an experience both escapist and cathartic, which provides recreation and rest for human beings from all social, cultural and work contexts, who enrich the world in their own way, and whose free time and emotional needs deserve the respect of filmmakers.
Being a timeless art, cinema's most relevant works can be appreciated with equal enjoyment by different generations. I seek to contribute a clear, concise, and unique voice to the collective conversation, to make the viewer trust the story that is told so that the experiences, epiphanies and arcs of transformation of my characters are embraced, and provide a benefit to their lives, preserving my personal proposal during the process of adaptation to the mutations that cinema undergoes with technological advances and social processes.