Comrades: Cartoons and meme videos subvert subversion.
Hector Herrera is a creative director and animator based in Canada. He is the magician behind the Struggle Session and “For Democracy” videos we created. He is founding partner in TOGETHER: Words+Pictures. At TOGETHER, he has co-directed and co-written animated shorts for TED-Ed, The Royal Society of Art and the WWF. Previously, he led the design teams of several award-winning studios where he worked for a wide range of clients including Cartoon Network, SpikeTV, and BBC. His 3-film animated rhyme cycle 'Beastly Bards' (co-written with Pazit Cahlon) won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Animated Short in 2016.
Most recently, he co-produced “The Coddling of the American Mind” and provided all the art direction and animation for the documentary. Shout out to Coddling Director Ted Balaker for connecting us!
In our conversation, we discuss:
How he noticed the subversion around him growing up in Juarez with Socialist family members, right on the US/Mexico border where Sicario was filmed
His encounter with BLM in 2015
Identity politics infecting multiculturalism in Canada
Where he sees the future of animation headed
An exciting new project he will be launching
Check out Hector’s Anti-Marxist posters at Dead Lenin:
All of the videos Hector and I have made:
