Wild Card
DIRECTOR Cecilia Valagussa, Marta del Grandi
GREEN SHORT FILM TIME 19:59
Italia Green Film Festival
Wild Card
★★★★★
Green Short Film TIME | 19:59
“Wild Card” is a 20-minute animated short film written and directed by the performance art duo Fossick Project. Since 2017, the duo has written and performed contemporary shadow theatre shows covering wildlife conservation and environmental issues; during the first lockdown for Covid-19, the idea for their Wild Card film came from a desire to talk about the pandemic from the perspective of the animal world.
The film is shot on an overhead projector using analogue animation with cut-out puppetry and shadow theatre techniques. The story is interwoven with songs to build the narrative without dialogue or text.
Set in Bangkok, the film reveals the environmental realities of urbanization while humans lose control over the consequences of their actions and their greed.
As a fortune-teller passes Bangkok’s Wat Arun temple in a gondola, she stops to sing a prophetic warning to the city’s inhabitants: “try to fly like a God; you will fall like one”. She reveals the future that follows unbridled greed through four tarot cards: Disruption, Extinction, Speranza, and Harmony.
The story begins underground, where we meet the protagonists of the film: a pangolin couple. The two lovers are living a tranquil life in their hidden subterranean city, when their quiet is upset by sudden tremors provoked by construction above. Separated by the cracks in the soil, they begin an adventurous journey to find each other, tracking the tale of the loss of connection between humans and the earth and the spread of disease through selfish pursuit of species destruction.
Wild Card was initiated and produced by Wonderfruit Festival in Thailand.
Cecilia Valagussa, Marta del Grandi
Fossick Project is a duo formed by illustrator Cecilia Valagussa and singer-songwriter Marta Del Grandi.
The two artists bring on stage a contemporary form of shadow theatre inspired by the endangered animal species and the diversity of landscapes in the world and suggest a reflection on environmental and climate change issues.
Cecilia Valagussa is an Italian multidisciplinary artist, mainly working with comics, illustration and performance. She studied Fine Arts in Milan, then comics and illustration in Belgium. From 2009 until 2013 she worked in Collettivo F84, six artists focusing on interactive public art projects.
Some of her short comics appeared on VICE US and on international anthologies such as Stripburger, Kutikuti, Vite, B comics. She is the author of three graphic novels: Les errances du Vaurien (Obriart éditions, Lille, FR), P.I.G.S. (VOStripgilde Uitgeverij, Gent, BE) and ColoreInferno (written by Ariel Macchi, Ifix Edizioni, Rome, IT). She is working on her upcoming book which will come out in 2021. She currently lives and works in Bologna (IT).
Marta Del Grandi is an Italian singer, songwriter, and musician. Born and raised in the province of Milan, in 2012 she moved to Ghent, Belgium, to continue her musical studies. After years of love for the jazz repertoire and a ton of live experience in clubs and jam sessions, she began writing songs and founded her first band, Marta Rosa, with whom in 2016 she released the self-produced album “Invertebrates”. She presented the record in Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, having the opportunity to combine her work with the passion for traveling and discovering diversity. Later this passion led her to move to China for a short period and then to Nepal, where she lived for two and a half years.
A very lucky virtual encounter in 2019 gave her the chance to meet Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice, open his shows in India and Nepal and play alongside with him. Meeting such an inspiring artist was a big encouragement to start working on her second album, currently in the making.
Cecilia ValagussaDirector
Marta del GrandiDirector
Cecilia ValagussaWriter
Marta del GrandiWriter
Guillaume de Maquillé – Exec. ProducerProducer
Rishi Jha – Consultant ProducerProducer
Marta Del GrandiMusic
Howard Bernstein AKA Howie BMusic
George LG (095 Paka Pictures) Filmed & Edited by
