José Pedro Cavalheiro, aka Zepe, was born in Porto in 1956.
He has a degree in Experimental Animation and Videography in Cinematography from the Brussels School of Visual Arts/École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de Bruxelles/- La Cambre (Belgium, 2002), and obtained his PhD and laureate in Fine Arts (Resources of Animation in Drawing: tendencies and Practices of Authorial Film/Os Recursos da Animação em Desenho: Tendências e Práticas do Filme Autoral/ at the Universidad Polytècnica de Valencia (Spain, 2012). He has been a lecturer at the University of Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts (Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa) since 2005. He is a researcher at the Art and Multimedia Research and Study centre – CIEAM/ Centro de Investigação e de Estudos Arte e Multimédia, now CIEBA, and is the Pedagogic coordinator of the liberal study courses taught there.
He coordinates the Degree in Art and Multimedia at FBAUL/Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts, and was a member of the Scientific Council, Pedagogic Council and School Council at the same faculty. In parallel, he completed his post-doctoral research at the Universidade Politécnica de Valência – Projecto I+D: Alternative strategies for making animated images based on their essence: mobile expression.
He was the pedagogic coordinator at CITEN – Centre for Image and Narrative Techniques at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s CAMJAP – a pioneering and experimental centre and driver of artistic teaching and creativity in the areas of illustration, cartoon comic strip and animated film, which has developed intense and extensive activity for over almost two decades.
He has an extensive background in Animation, Illustration, Cartoon/Comic strip as a creator of graphics, director, project coordinator and producer.
His artistic and academic activities mainly involve developing issues around representation of movement, and the intersection between drawing and filming practices that explore notions of continuity and discontinuity in animated graphics and narrative creation.
He has directed three shorts (Cof Cof, Stuart and Cândido) and an animated series (Ginjas) which have won national and international awards. The two that stand out are Stuart and Cândido, as both were nominated for the Cartoon D’Or – the most prestigious international prize in European Animated Film.
From 2019 the short – Stuart and the animated television series – Ginjas will be integrated in the National Cinema Plan.