Luca Dipierro is an Italian artist, animator and

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

born in

Merano Merano (, , ) or Meran () is a city and ''comune'' in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Generally best known for its spa resorts, it is located within a basin, surrounded by mountains standing up to above sea level, at the entrance to the Passeier ...

, in Northern Italy, and living in the United States. Dipierro's drawings have been used on numerous book and record covers. His cut-out animations, filmed in

stop motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...

with marionettes made out of paper and old book cloth, have been called "a perfect balance of creepy and charming" ('' Huffington Post''). His work has been shown in theaters, galleries, and film festivals in the United States and Europe: notably the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (English: Florence Musical May) is an annual Italian arts festival in Florence, including a notable opera festival, under the auspices of the Opera di Firenze. The festival occurs between late April into June annual ...

, and the Portland Film Festival. In a 2010 interview with Ken Baumann on HTMLGIANT, Dipierro referred to the painstaking quality of his own work as a "systematic, patient, scrupulous waste of time." Dipierro currently lives in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...

Films

Since 2006, Dipierro has created more than thirty short animated films, some used as booktrailers for the work of writers such as C.A. Conrad,

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Robert Lopez Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American songwriter for musicals, best known for co-creating ''The Book of Mormon'' and ''Avenue Q'', and for co-writing the songs featured in the Disney computer-animated films '' Frozen'', its seque ...

, Jenny Offil, Studs Terkel, and Leni Zumas. Between 2014 and 2015, Dipierro toured with the show
Paper Circus
', a screening of his animations with a live soundtrack performed with the Italian band

Father Murphy ''Father Murphy'' is an American western drama television series that aired on the NBC network from November 3, 1981, to September 18, 1983. Michael Landon created the series, was the executive producer, and directed the show in partnership wi ...

. Paper Circus has been presented in various cinemas and galleries across the USA: the Hollywood Theatre and the Clinton Street Theatre in Portland, OR, Cinefamily at The Silent Movie Theatre in LA, the Grand Illusion Cinema in Seattle, WA,

Spectacle Theater Spectacle Theater is a collectively run, independent movie theater that operates out of a small space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in New York, United States. History Spectacle Theater opened in September 2010 at 124 S. 3rd Street in Brooklyn in ...

and Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn, NY and many others. His latest animated film is called ''The Cadence, A Tale of Paper and Cloth,'' completed in 2022. Dipierro was the subject of a 2011 documentary short film directed by American photographer McNair Evans.

Publications

Dipierro is the author of the art-zine series ''Das Ding'', published by The Walk; an illustrated novel in cards, ''A Wooden Leg'', co-created with Leni Zumas (The Walk, 2014); and numerous art booklets. Dipierro has also published a book of short fictions in Italian, ''Biscotti neri'' (Madcap, 2011), described by

as "dark, surreal, and extremely unsettling ..folk tales of the future." Dipierro's prose in English has appeared in Gigantic, Harp and Altar, No Colony, New York Tyrant, PANK, the anthology City Sages Baltimore, and other publications.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dipierro, Luca Living people Italian animators Italian animated film directors Stop motion animators Italian artists Artists from Portland, Oregon Year of birth missing (living people)