Session 2

In this session, in addition to the screening, the filmmakers will briefly present aspects of the production process of their films.

Descartes
Concha Barquero, Alejandro Alvarado
Spain, 2021, 21 min, 16mm to DCP, colour-B&W, Spanish

Camera: Concha Barquero, Alejandro Alvarado. Editor: Concha Barquero, Alejandro Alvarado. Sound: Juan Carlos del Castillo. Music: Paloma Peñarrubia. Production: Alvarquero


8 filmes sobre la guerra
Pablo Casanueva
Spain, 2021, 33 min, DCP, colour, Asturian-Spanish

Camera, editor: Pablo Casanueva. Sound: Carlos Maestre. Music: Manuel de Falla (Tine Thing Helseth y Kathryn Stott). Producción: Solombra

The fact that there are lives that are more livable than others is nothing new. Although these lives are not more valuable, they are more valued and exercise over the former all the weight of their fortune. After death, their eternal life is also more eternal and more sacred than that of the others. The same thing happens with films. Some have an infinite life while others have no life at all. Based on this idea, the film Descartes, by Concha Barquero and Alejandro Alvarado has come into being. There are films for which a discard is a waste product, perhaps an extra. However, for a prohibited film, these discards are the only fragments to be saved from censorship, they are the free radicals of the film. This is what the filmmakers found when they visited the Filmoteca Española in search of materials on Rocío, by Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 260 rolls of negatives. The sound is lost. It is put back together with the reading of the harsh sentence in favour of the censorship of the film and two texts by Francisco Espinosa Maestre on the Franquist repression. For his part, Pablo Casanueva presents eight short films linked by a common theme of war and its effects on Asturias. They are eight post-mortem extensions of some lives that appeared to be forgotten. The cinema recovers for those who fight what the State made sure was only given to suppressors and bandits. The film starts with a map of what is to come: the construction of the bridge connecting the two banks of the river Ribeseya, a bridge that has had a tough time: its old wood was once sold for five thousand pesetas, it was once blown up to prevent the advance of fascism, an advance that could not be stopped. The film, like a bridge, is made of different materials: letters, photos, public archives, recollections, oral memory. One by one, each short takes on the rhythm and form of these materials, such as handmade bottles full of letters, thrown into the sea and which come from a past which needs to be thought about and which needs to be made to coexist with the present.

Lucía Salas