Session 1

El andamio / La Bastida
Javier Calvo de Cabrera
Spain, 2022, 10 min, VHS to DCP, colour, no dialogue
Editor: Javier Calvo de Cabrera

Mal siglo haya
Luis Lechosa
Spain, 2022, 38 min, 16 mm, colour, Spanish
Director of photography and editor Luis Lechosa. Sound designer: Pablo Teijón

Two films in constant movement rub shoulders in this session. Their comings and goings have to do with what there is and what is taken for granted, which is dissected. El andamio / La Bastida [The Scaffolding] begins with an almost narcotic dream. Is there a spell on the house where everybody sleeps? The camera records a state that is like an abyss, and from there moves towards total darkness, a movement from inside outwards. From an ordinary movement, that of going out of the house, comes the idea that if sleeping means being out of time, darkness means being out of space.

One lives on what the other dissects: Mal siglo haya visits one place –the glacial lakes of Neila, with their characters, the permanent and transitory inhabitants of the park– and different times. It begins in a light, analogue register, with a landscape, but is soon invaded by texts that are like geological strata, two from the oral tradition (one a legend and the other a song), and two from the written tradition (a tourist guide and a book about climbing). Centuries separate the ways of talking recorded here, reread as an interminable, gentle joke about the nature park. Intentionally or otherwise, the texts show how people's relationship with this place, how it is described, has changed into something different, and what has happened there. They also speak of how it will change in the future, when the world's climate changes what we see on the surface of this area, Neila, forever.

Lucía Salas