Professor Iria Cabrera recently presented her doctoral dissertation titled The Czech School of Stop Motion: Origins, Characteristics, and Influences. She received the academic distinction of *cum laude* for her outstanding presentation.
Cabrera completed her doctoral studies in the Art, Production, and Research program at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain. In her dissertation, she analyzes the language, origins, and characteristics of the Czech school in the field of stop-motion animation, as well as the influence it exerts on foreign creators.
While working on her dissertation, the Spanish Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the UPV, awarded her an Erasmus+ internship and research grant to conduct a research stay at FAMU in Prague.
This stay allowed her to conduct interviews with filmmakers and other professionals in the Czech animation industry. She also carried out pre-production for the short film Rizoma and visited animation studios.
Since returning to Spain, she has participated in conferences and seminars and has been writing the main body of her thesis. She was also invited to teach animation seminars at the University of the Americas in Mexico, where she made contact with stop-motion animation studios; she discovered that the influence on her work stemmed from Czech creators. This not only gave her the opportunity to teach a seminar at the university specifically focused on stop-motion but also helped her gather some of the information for the final chapter of her doctoral dissertation.
In 2021, she was invited to participate with two of her stop-motion puppets in a solo exhibition on animation held in La Coruña, Spain, as part of the 5th International Festival. During her stay, she was invited to contribute a chapter to a monograph on the filmmaker Ray Harryhausen.
She recently published a research article she co-authored with critic and writer Javier Mateo Hidalgo. The text focuses on the work of a Czech filmmaker, which they explore based on an interview they both conducted.
22/02/2022
