Selkirk de Walter Tournier: animador, artesano y náufrago

Abstract

Walter Tournier (1949) is one of the most important animation filmmakers from Uruguay. With a trajectory that started in 1974, and that has been acknowledged internationally, Tournier is characterized by a sustained ethical commitment with social justice, with special emphasis on his work in defense of children’s rights. However, it was not until 2012 when he was able to complete his first feature length film: Selkirk. In this movie, Tournier revisits the figure of Alexander Selkirk, “the real Robinson Crusoe”, as the subtitle of the movie presents it. In this way, Tournier’s Selkirk is situated in an extensive tradition of islands, castaways, and shipwrecks, as well as readings and versions. This includes the approaches of post-colonial criticism, that has seen in Daniel Defoe’s Crusoe, and other castaways (such as Shakespeare’s magus Prospero) the quintessential representatives of colony and empire (Mannoni; Barker y Hulme). Although Tournier, true to his convictions, strives for a different tone on a tale that is addressed at a younger audience—for example with a reflection on the real value of gold in a desert island—these colonial associations of the castaway seem to survive. Following Chistropher Palmer’s ideas on the potential of “reconciliation” that certain recent treatments of castaway stories offer, and paying special attention to specific materialities, that not only the castaway, but also the animator works through, I will show the ways in which Selkirk offers and at the same time does not offer a different version of the castaway, of Robinson Crusoe, and of a materially plentiful place.