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Carlos Lascano: “You can change your reality through perception.”

Carlos Lascano is a multidisciplinary artist from Argentina, currently living in Madrid.

Carlos is a director, animator and producer but considers himself mainly a “storyteller”. He likes to express himself through various media, such as illustration, comics, animation, and live action. What was his path towards becoming who he is today?

His father is an artist, his mother is a writer, and his grandmother used to tell him and his younger brother magical stories, with marionettes in a small theater that she built. This was when he decided to embark on a creative path, with the focus on visual storytelling. “When I was a kid, my parents, and my grandma always told me stories which I loved. Eventually I felt that I had to start telling stories myself. I have drawn ever since I was little, comics were the perfect medium. Though after some time I realized, in order to go into more depth, I needed more tools, i.e. sound, movement etc.; therefore when I was a teenager I started to experiment with animation. I took a video camera and together with my brother we started to create a lot of stop-motion experiments,” Carlos says. 

Since he was so used to being surrounded by art, he also felt that he needed something that could feed his soul in a different way. This is why he chose to study law at university. Humanities, such as philosophy, sociology or psychology offered him a specific point of view and enriched not only himself but also his artistic practice. “I wanted to broaden my perspective. It is very important to open your vision when you do art, and that is what these studies gave me,” he explains.

His first film was called Marionettes. “I remember when I was in sociology class and we were talking about Ortega y Gasset and John Stuart Mill, and their thoughts on determinism vs. free will, that really inspired me. I wondered what destiny really was – are you or are you not free? Eventually that led to my first real film about a guy who is in fact a marionette but doesn’t know it. I love to tell a story with some subtle metaphor in order to make you think about it even after watching the film. I like to plant a little seed in each viewer’s head, to let an idea grow in their mind,” he says.

Carlos writes all of his films. “I am also always open to collaborating with other people, I used to do it a lot, but I love to tell my personal stories, I have the need to tell them myself. I don’t write novels, everything I write is connected somehow to a visual narrative. Right now I have a big project – a feature film, and parallel to that I am writing a graphic novel. I love to experiment with writing for the screen but using graphic novel tools. When you play across different formats you somehow become more original,” he concludes.  It’s not surprising that in everything he does he goes by the motto: “You can change your reality through perception.”

Eallin has worked with Carlos on films such as Shadow of Blue, Amnesty International’s Standing Up for Freedom, and commercials for brands such as CIF, Coca-Cola, and more.