Spanish Cinema Without Fear

Out

Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic? No. In OUT, a documentary filmed during a professional tennis tournament in Barcelona, the main characters are those who remain outside of the playfield lines, almost invisibles for television. This visual essay leads the viewer to the hidden world of ball boys, line judges and chair umpires. An environment not as glamourous as the one of tennis players but also full of tension and emotions.

Inausketa / Pruning

Pruning (Inausketa) is based on the only book written by the Galician poet José María Diaz Castro. This piece draws on the verse A Cerna, in the book Nimbos. This project was made possible thanks to the blog Primavera Act and its managers Martin Pawley, José Manuel Sande and Xurxo Chirro, managers too of the Proxecto NIMBOS. This project aims to retract to mind a great poet and translate his writtens under the parameters of experimental film poetry.

Eusebio, el americano / Eusebio, the american

Ethnographic portrait of the exhumation of the author”s grandfather Eusebio's remains. Located in a small cemetery in the North of Spain, the story behind it is narrated by her father and sprinkled with poetic undertones of archive footage and a pop song that influenced her understanding of death while he was growing up in Spain.

Tres corderos / Three sheep

Triptych about the human condition, offering or sacrifice?

Si el ayer no fuera hoy / If yesterday were not today

This audiovisual self-ethnographic essay talks about “family across time”. It thoughts about how past and present mix and complement each other, since past never really passes but stays forever, leaving permanent marks. This short film arises from the own experience of the author, who tries to reflect on her own immediate family and on the changes that it has experienced.

Desierto Circular / Circular dessert

This is the archeology of a landscape, an invitation to go down as an archaeologist in the different strata of memory and to think that the history we re-experience through its excavation or interpretation, can be only fragmented or broken. A single space is articulated in two different ways. Two long takes shows the same scale model but the elements that conform it has changed its distribution. Accidents and buildings invoked are reconstructions that refers to the recent history of Lima and demands for a shapeless non-linear memory.

Yu Yú

Landscape footage of the “Five Dragons” in the Yangtze Valley, the third-largest river in the world, a Unesco World Heritage site in the Chinese province of Chóngqìng, is coupled with views of the gigantic city of Chóngqìng, which resembles a juggernaut and dominates the valley. The beekeeper Shé Zuŏ Bīn performs a traditional rite of spring on one of the rocks. He allows queen bees to be placed on his body who then summon worker bees. By the end, Shé Zuŏ Bīn”s body is entirely covered by bees. In a kind of trance, he stands utterly still. The buzzing of bees dominates all. He trusts the bees completely, and for a moment they lose all that is dangerous, terrifying. They are a protective shield.

Digital Trauma

If we can access our past at any given moment, to what extent can we get rid of it and look ahead? What consequences do the access to a digital memory (including access to the words, images and sounds of the horrors of the past) have for post-conflict societies? Can a digital memory become a powerful tool to ignite more profound ethnic hate, violence and war?