"I’m still a kid inside, and have not wavered from my childhood tastes and ideas,” says Isabella Josephine Leon, the up-and-coming director of mixed Native American and Mexican heritage. A recent alumnus from Central Saint Martins, she graduated with an impressive first feature short film Bellywash, which will debut at festivals and be released later next year. Often veering into Gothic realms with her hauntingly beautiful visuals and concepts, Isabella instantly flew onto our radar as one to watch. Join us as we dive into the creative’s new film and the ways in which she nurtures her dark romantic aesthetic.
Bellywash, behind the scenes photograph by Briana Quintanilla. Courtesy of the director.
Born in the US and raised in Missouri and LA, Isabella's experience growing up amidst the rustic midwestern state and LA's glittering metropolis later influenced her unique visual language. It was in the Midwest's milieu of hunting culture, rustic cabins and Wes Anderson-esque American diners that she realised her passion for taxidermy, the macabre, dark romanticism and set design. Perhaps a symptom of moving between states, Isabella’s films are purposefully meditative, and avoid fast-paced narratives set in the modern day. "I want to tell stories beyond the modern age,” she explains. “Almost like they are living in their own world. This is where the fantasy element comes into play."
Animation stills by Isabella Josephine Leon for Saturnalia: Unbinding Fetish Fashion documentary by Reagan Rubin. Courtesy of director
Escaping into imaginary worlds is nothing new to Isabella. As a child, she'd obsessively create miniature fairy houses decorated with twig furniture bound in yarn and flowers. With the help of her interior designer mother, Isabella discovered ways to make more ambitious pieces and soon learned that there was no limit to what she could create. She reprised her skill at using found objects to create other dimensions for her stop-motion short How to See Clouds, among other films.
Similar to the early stop-motion films of animation luminary Władysław Starewicz, such as Lucanus Cervus (1910) and The Ant And The Grasshopper (1911), Isabella incorporates gothic imagery and decaying objects like dried flowers into her films. These dedicated blooms echo golden afternoons spent as a child chasing imaginary fairies in Missouri's forests. Her younger self was equally taken with macabre fairy tales, like the original The Little Mermaid Story (1837), where Ariel is rejected and evaporates into the ocean, as well as Frankenstein (1818) and Dracula (1897), including Eiko Ishioka's costume designs for the 1992 film).
Isabella Josephine Leon by Louis Gardner. Courtesy of the director.
Isabella’s childhood love for dark romanticism is visible throughout her work, and she names directors Sofia Coppola, Frances Ford Coppola and Pan's Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro as some of her key inspirations. The creative has also looked to children's animations of the '60s and '70s, and merged their adolescent naïveté with mature themes to create pieces that infringe upon the boundaries between innocence and horror. This continues a long tradition of infusing dark imagery into the playful world of child-like animation. From Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) and Henry Slick's Coraline (2009), to the spinning windows in The Haunted Hotel (1907), produced by animation pioneer J. Stuart Blackton.
"My creativity hasn’t changed one bit since I was three years-old," Isabella says. "When I was a little kid, I would draw puff balls and make them out of yarn. And I'm still doing that now. Each of my films probably has a puffball in it." Her creative process is instinctual and ideas typically emerge without warning. Character’s, set designs and colour palettes then evolve through distinct glimmers of realisation.
With each project, Isabella's mind always considers the objects around her. “I like the realism that comes with miniature objects made from everyday things,” she says. Through trial and error, she feels her way through various fabrics, foliage and ideas until the final piece is realised. Describing her creative process, Isabella says: “I just start doing it. I don't plan. I don't draw. I don't think about anything in advance.”
Bellywash, behind the scenes photograph by Briana Quintanilla. Courtesy of the director.
Not only did the move to CSM expand Isabella's skillset, but it also projected her into the city's heady subculture scene. The creative embraced the avant-garde nightlife traditionally favoured by CSM students (such as fashion luminaries John Galliano and Alexander McQueen), and hosted a popular music event night called Sour Apple across the city's alternative venues. It was here that fellow classmates, and people from neo-subcultures (resembling Goths, Metal-Heads and Punks) moshed enthusiastically to live heavy metal bands.
Isabella's night-time escapades influenced her eye for surrealist set designs and narratives, and it wasn't long before it wasn't long before I asked her to collaborate on my award-winning documentary Saturnalia: Unbinding Fetish Fashion (2023). Isabella's bewitching animations of barbie dolls masquerading as fetishists introduced key interviews with multiple fashion and fetish titans, including the fashion photographer Nick Knight and former fashion editor at i-D Magazine and presenter of The Clothes Show Caryn Franklin MBE.
Bellywash, behind the scenes photograph by Briana Quintanilla. Courtesy of the director.
Throughout her time on CSM’s Fashion Communications course, Isabella constantly distinguished herself from her fashion-oriented peers by artistically interpreting briefs. She showed exceptional skill in crafting puppets, miniature set designs, and using the fashion and videography tools at hand to stylise her projects.
Primed for her final project in the course’s fourth year, Isabella unsurprisingly opted not to create a fashion film like her classmates. Instead, she directed and produced Bellywash: an ambitious live-action short film which showcased the hallmarks of her oeuvre: fairy tales, gothic allegories and exquisite historically-accurate costumes and sets.
The Crystal Grotto at Painshill Park. Courtesy of Darren Pipe
Bellywash takes its name and inspiration from the real-life 18th century story of an ornamental hermit (first name unknown), an ornamental hermit hired by the aristocrat Charles Hamilton. Forbidden to speak to anyone, leave the estate, and cut his hair and nails, the hermit was fired without pay after he was discovered drinking at a local pub just three weeks after arriving. The solitary life of a hermit forced to wear a druid’s goat hair robe evidently wasn't for him. As well as dressing her actors in historically accurate eighteenth century clothing, Isabella shot the film in Hamilton's Painshill Park and Rothamsted Manor (a Jacobean Manor House).
We follow the tragicomic tale through the naive eyes of Charles' daughter Jane Hamilton (played by Mia Partington). An imaginative girl inspired by Isabella's younger self, she believes the hermit to be a fantastical being with magic powers. The hermit, however, is, of course, silent, miserable and stoic, and he comically answers her attempts at conversation with frank facial expressions. "She tries to befriend him, but is confused as to why he doesn't talk or interact with her," says Isabella. "Together, they show that you can still grow a friendship without words. That love and acceptance doesn't have to be transactional." Scenes of the hermit's anguish and Hamilton's gluttony are masterfully spliced together, while the fanciful scenes we share with Jane provide momentary reprieves from the tension.
Isabella Josephine Leon by Louis Gardner. Courtesy of the director.
"Although ornamental hermits are historical, the fact that they were hired to live in solitary confinements for aristocrat's viewing pleasure feels otherworldly and insane," says Isabella. "I wanted to expose this feeling by enhancing the story's fantasy elements." The film comes to a climax with a fantastical dreamscape of ethereal fairies imagined by Jane to be wearing white chemises and ceremoniously dancing in a grotto. Isabella shot the scene in the Crystal Grotto designed by Hamilton at Painshill Park. The real Jane may have played in the grotto and imagined wondrous creatures frolicking among its sparkling stalactites.
Isabella’s introspective ideas, intuitive storytelling and acute eye for detail makes her one creative to keep on our radar. While she dabbles in digital animation, shadow puppetry, 2D animation and illustration, Isabella finds herself most drawn to stop-motion. "The medium allows us to really see the fabric details in clothing, the paint strokes on set designs and a character's imperfections,” she explains. "The decision to use animation or live action depends on a project's nature."
Today, the alumni foresees a career in both fields: "My goal is to keep creating, pushing myself and following what inspires me. I want to discover new stories and ways in which to visually communicate them."
Words & Creative Direction: Reagan Rubin
Portraits: Louis Gardner
Bellywash BTS: Briana Quintanilla
Warbdrobe: 150 mg
