Eduardo Darino

Eduardo Darino is a Uruguayan film producer, director, animator, and cartoonist.

His earliest work, Creacion (1963), is the first animation to be created over stock film and hand-painted in Uruguay.

It was screened at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, receiving a Certificate.

This short received the Award Premio de la Asociación de Críticos Cinematográficos del Uruguay; Premio Festival de Cine Nacional,Cine Club Fax; and the Premio Nacional de Cinematografía Consejo Departamental de Montevideo, 1964.

Darino was to assist Pablo Szir with several of his films, designing titles or animation for El bombero esta triste y llora and Diario de campamento, and doing animation in Argentina and in Uruguay for Szir's Es un arbol y una nube and Una industria para el pueblo.

He filmed and directed the feature documentary Copihues Rojos for the Consejo Nacional de Ensenanza Primaria (Uruguay), a co-production with Chile about teachers' exchange between the two countries, and social issues, and Orate Frates about the miraculous San Cono festivities in Florida, assisted by Eduardo Terra.

Horacio Schek from Teledoce asked him to make a pilot for the travel series Pasaporte.

Darino's next films, El Idolo, Sombras sin Luces and Sombras y Luces (1965), are drawn on film stock, but include magnetic sound, like Cocktail de Rayas, which was re-created in digital form in 2011.

This was followed by Correcaminos, aka Caminante, the first basic animation and computer art on the continent.

It was cited by Clemente Padin as the "forerunner of Latin American code and web animation" in Ovum and other publications.

During this time he illustrated book covers for Arca and designed cartoons for Diario Uruguay.

Inspired by the acquisition of a Keystone 16mm camera, he shot El Suicida, a fifteen-minute film, with Felipe Lacroze; and Tan Solo Hombres, a thirty-minute film, with Mario Branda, assisted by Alberto Calvelo, with music by Pedro Zalkind, exploring creative editing to tell the story of a marginalized homeless person.

In February 1968 he filmed Apex, with Rodolfo Musitelli and actress Adriana Lagomarsino.

This was the first short in Cinemascope done in Uruguay using posterization, years before its use by Andy Warhol in 1970.

Cine Club Fax invited him to develop the first full course in film-making.

Darino wanted to work with an industry director and contacted Manuel Antin in Buenos Aires.

He suggested Pablo Szir.

Szir not only accepted, but brought Jorge Goldenberg, from the Escuela de Cine del Litoral in Santa Fe, along with him.

As a final exercise the course produced Delito, focusing on social issues, with Mario Branda and Adela-Gleijer.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he studied law at the Universidad de la Republica and came to New York in 1973 where he still resides.

During his career he has drawn multiple cartoon characters, produced several films, and made multiple television series and documentaries both in Uruguay and the United States.

In his early years Darino had no access to a camera, so, inspired by Norman McLaren, his first experiments with animation included scratching and painting on the film stock itself.

He participated actively in the Cine Club del Uruguay and taught himself how to make film.

Jose Carlos Alvarez praised this film in his review in La Mañana and it received an award at the Florence International Film Festival in 1976.

Through the years, Darino created animation and ID logos for the programs Telemundo and Telecataplúm. With the latter, he expanded his cartoon skills, drawing the show characters, and exploring cut-out techniques.

He received an invitation to a film festival in Cordoba, Argentina, and, knowing that Jan Lenica would be the jury's president, he traveled to meet him.

They discussed techniques that Darino later implemented in his own style in Carousel and Hello?

Norman McLaren wrote him an enthusiastic letter and left the door open for him to visit the National Film Board of Canada.

When Darino was finally able to make the trip, McLaren was sick and semi-retired.

He still has the letter's closing with McLaren's signature pinned up at his desk.

Turismo asked for El Lapiz Magico, and Daniel Scheck, from El Pais, had him make Campeon de Campeones about the Uruguayan world soccer championships which closed out Darino's work in the 1980s.

He made the animated film El Gallito Luis, combining cartooning with live actors, "way before Roger Rabbit", as Peter Cowie says in the International Film Guide.

At the ICUR, the only department of the University making films at the time, Darino filmed multiple science shorts: "Ancistrus", "Termites", "Spiders", and "Hoplias Malabaricus", continued doing cartoons and worked with Walter Dassory and Roberto Gardiol.

Dr. Rodolfo Talice, ICUR's Director, entrusted him with Pontoporia – El delfin del Plata, a film about the language of dolphins, filmed in Punta del Diablo, Rocha, Uruguay.

This was made with the participation of Japanese scientists and René Guy Busnel, a partner of Jacques Cousteau, who later published Psycho-acoustic Studies of Dolphins, and many other studies.

As a Fulbright fellow, studying at New York University's (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts, Darino was shocked to learn that the Oxberry animation stand, mentioned in the course catalog, was Francis Lee's and that the school would use it only a few hours a semester.

He ended up assisting Lee, to get access to the stand, and animated Carioca for him for TV Globo.

He was required to get a basic stand for his NYU thesis, Homomania, sound by Miguel Castro, which he started at ICUR, Uruguay.

Eli Hamerow, his editing teacher, introduced the class to the Optical House, where he met Richard "Dick" Rauh.

At this time, Harry Marks was working for ABC and conceived of the idea of the moving logo.