17 minute read
Lan
In the Basque language, “Lan” means ‘work’ or ‘labour’, and also ‘harvest’. This coincidence surely gives us a historical reading: for a long time, practically all work took place in the fields. Perhaps this explains why a noteworthy couple of Portuguese filmmakers, António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, said that it had always helped to consider themselves as “cinema farming peasants”. Lan is the name that we have given to the festival’s new section where we harvest different ways of thinking about the processes of imagination and work in documentary cinema. Paisaia, that grouped together sessions dedicated to a certain panorama of Basque-Navarrese films over the last four years, will revolve around public programs in this edition: in addition to showing their films, the filmmakers will briefly present aspects of their production process. Termitas, running symmetrically to Paisaia, will show emerging or little-seen works from our immediate surroundings, by asking the filmmakers to also present materials from their work process. Its name comes from the article by Manny Farber called “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” (1962) where we read
about those films that “seems to have no ambition towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn’t anywhere or for anything. A peculiar fact about termite tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.” Paulino Viota, one of our best-loved and admired termitesque figures, is visiting the festival to talk about the use of the first person in cinema, a booming perspective in the contemporary documentary. He will focus on one of the authors that he has studied most deeply over the last few years, where selfabsorption and the ego always show up in the end: Federico Fellini.
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Finally, the Who Will Tell the Story? Beginnings of Documentary Film in Morocco retrospective will be extended into a “film-conference” by the French researcher currently living in Morocco Léa Morin, and a round table discussion involving the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola that has worked with Punto de Vista to digitalise some of the films that Léa will be showing.
Paisaia Session 1
The two pieces forming part of this session have one thing in common: light. In the film by Patxi Burillo, the reference appears in the title itself: Argileak, which means ‘those that make light’. And it is precisely these mysterious, anonymous characters who we first see, crossing through a wood, partially and fleetingly illuminating the trees, as they appear to be taking the light to some place in particular. We could say that the film has a second act in which the spectators become the protagonists. Faces illuminated by a flickering light. What are they looking at? This is something that we’ll never know, but those illuminated eyes, looking with great concentration, lead us to reflect on the actual fascination of seeing. This same fascination is created in the film by Ainara Elgoibar, at the moment when a pair of hands are manipulating some coloured LEDs and these are multiplied, to create spirals of light, converting the image into something abstract. Also the first shot we see in Rotor, a sun filmed head on. A rotor is the rotating part of an electric machine or turbine and, through phrases written in the middle of the screen, the film made by Elgoibar takes us on a journey that passes through different inventions such as cars and Wankel engines, watches and the time zone system. The film portrays a series of objects filmed in 16mm in Lindau, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Altlußheim, London and Bakio between years 2015 and 2021, all accompanied by a rich soundtrack that starts and ends with bells. Lur Olaizola
Argileak Patxi Burillo
Spain, 2022, 15 min, DCP, colour, Basque
Cinematography Pablo Paloma, Mirari Echávarri / Editing Jaume Claret, Pablo Paloma, Óscar Vincentelli / Sound José María Avilés, Elisa Celda, Martín Scaglia / Production Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Martín Besné, Julieta Juncadella
Rotor Ainara Elgoibar
Spain, 2021, 15 min, DCP, colour, Spanish
Paisaia Session 2
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the first circumnavigation of the world, a mission set in motion by the Portuguese explorer Fernando de Magallanes and completed by the Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, whose figures are at the centre of the celebrations. Is the outcome of this exploit also being celebrated? In They Speak Too Anna de Guia-Eriksson gives body and scenery to the work entitled Black Henry by the Filipino poet, Luis H. Francia, bringing to life scenes from the work in specific locations of Donostia-San Sebastian, Pasai and Getaria (the birthplace of Elcano), places that bear a direct relationship with the colonial consequences of this journey that left behind a trail of death and destruction. The filmmaker stops in those streets frequented by people out for a Sunday stroll and reads out loud a Spanish translation of the text that imagines the reactions to the first arrival of Magallanes, from the Philippines. She is surrounded by passers-by who look at her as they go on their way, as if she were a foreign body, as if the Philippines had not been colonised by Spain for centuries and centuries, at the same time as Latin America. Stopping in front of the traces of a version of history made in stone and concrete, de GuiaEriksson gradually progresses, scene after scene, in this plot that imagines the possible conversations and decisions taken by each of the antagonistic groups taking part in the first exchange, one led by Humabón (then Don Carlos) and the other by Lapulapu (who would organise the resistance that led to the death of Magallanes. They Speak Too interrupts the course of the official history, the circumnavigation of the world and the figure of Elcano, and questions the place that the Basque territory has had in the imperialist quest that subdued entire populations for centuries, by staging at a distance a conversation on events, whose glories are being celebrated but whose consequences have been ignored.
Lucía Salas
They Speak Too Anna de Guia-Eriksson
Spain, 2020, 38 min, DCP, colour-B&W, Spanish
Cinematography Jessica Y. Lee / Editing Humberto Vallejo Cunillera / Sound Juliana Príncipe Salazar, Sofía García Broca, Pablo Lillo Aguilar / Production Mariana Sánchez Bueno
Termitas Session 1
Mid-twentieth century. Families of Spaniards living in former colonies, provinces and territories under Spanish domination. Ambassadors, diplomats, perhaps businessmen... people who have the means, as it used to be said, enjoying their leisure time in exotic locations which they gradually make their own, constructing their own space, their new home and a certain type of relationship with “the other one”, with the local inhabitants. Domestic films, full of imprints and, perhaps, secrets.
Early 21st century. A few young African migrants in Barcelona, in transit. It is not free time, but waiting time, uncertainty and homesickness: faced with doubts about whether their application for asylum will be successful, sharing memories of their journey, reflecting upon the European dream and the nostalgic connection of the birthplace. A small film full of emotion, distance and phone calls.
Memorias de ultramar and Kambá! offer two different and complementary perspectives that can serve to reflect upon the relationship between Europe and Africa in this last century (and up to today). And they do so in a fun way, with well-differentiated materials and rules: on the one hand, the play with archive material that takes on a new life through editing and adding sound; on the other hand, the play between reality and metafiction. Miguel Zozaya
Memorias de ultramar Carmen Bellas, Alberto Berzosa
Spain, 2021, 49 min, DCP, colour-B&W, Spanish
Editing Carmen Bellas, Eduardo Palenque / Sound Juan Carlos Blancas / Production Filmoteca Española
Kambá! Carolina Kuzeluk, Diana Kuzeluk
Spain, 2021, 25 min, DCP, colour-B&W, French-Fula-Spanish-Arabic-Amazigh
Cinematography Carolina Kuzeluk, Alex Reverté / Editing Gerard Borràs / Sound Joaquín Faúndez Hormazábal / Production Escac Films, S.L.
Termitas Session 2
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
Descartes Concha Barquero, Alejandro Alvarado
Spain, 2021, 21 min, DCP, colour-B&W, Spanish
Cinematography Concha Barquero, Alejandro Alvarado / Editing 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
Termitas Session 3
Dreamed Alyonka [Alyonka soñada]. Re-edited Alyonka. Digested Alyonka. Dreams and editing are, perhaps, forms of digestion. Forms of comprehension and transformation. Alyonka soñada is a film that dreams, overcomes, digests, comprehends, transforms, another film, Alyonka. The first Alyonka is a Soviet film from 1961, directed by Boris Barnet, a filmmaker with a complicated career (complicated is, in this case, a euphemism). Although we do not know whether or not he was happy, we do know that his films made his audience happy. Alyonka is a film with a girl, with plains, with trucks, with blue skies and white clouds, with love, with energy, with a little dog, with ice-creams and with beer. It is a film that the filmmakers dreamed about before they could see it, until the internet put it into their hands (and this is also dealt with in Alyonka soñada, regarding how films reach us) and they carried on dreaming after seeing it. Alyonka soñada is, perhaps, a film that also invites us to dream about it, or which invites us to realise how we dream about films. Although this does not stop it from being extremely refined, it also shows us a homemade, artisan form of film-making, of working with what we see, of celebrating what we marvel at. It’s a film that reminds us that all of us, at least in our dreams, are editors. A film that dreams of a film of the past and which, so we believe, also dreams of films of the future, films that, with the example of its lightness, invites us to make. Pablo García Canga
Alyonka soñada Volga
Spain-Germany-Lebanon, 2021, 71 min, DCP, colour, Russian-Spanish-English-Catalan
Napardocs
With the aim of proposing a space in which to meet and talk about documentary film, NaparDocs was created in 2018 by NAPAR, an association of audiovisual production companies in Navarre. This open meeting has been growing in the festival, maturing and extending beyond the territory of Navarre.
Specifically, it is a space for debate around three working tables on screenwriting and directing, film production and distribution, with dialogues moderated by guests invited by the festival. Based on these three presentations, NaparDocs gives us the opportunity to exchange experiences and create links with other professionals.
One of the new features this year will be a networking session with the aim of promoting co-productions and creating cross-border bridges through the Zinema Zubiak project, an initiative that NAPAR shares with Ibaia, an association of independent audiovisual production companies in the Basque Country, and Zukugailua, an organisation for film creation in the Northern Basque Country.
Within the context of the retrospective Who Will Tell the Story? Beginnings of Documentary Film in Morocco, curated by Omar Berrada and Ali Essafi, Punto de Vista Festival enters into collaboration with Léa Morin and the Research Department at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, leading to the digitization of the material available from two hitherto practically unspooled films made by the documentary filmmakers Abdlerkader Lagtaâ and Mostafa Derkaoui at the end of the 1980s: Le port de Casablanca and La femme rurale au Maroc (the latter in collaboration with Fatima Mernissi). Within the same framework, we welcome Touda Bouanani, head of Archives Bouanani in Rabat, from where she has driven the recovery of her father’s work and that of a whole generation of Moroccan filmmakers. Touda will stay on in Pamplona after the festival, undertaking a research residency at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Huarte (CACH). In the company of all these guests, we will ask ourselves about the challenges and possibilities of research, programming and preservation in alternative archives, particularly in Morocco.
Léa Morin (researcher and curator), Touda Bouanani (Archives Bouanani), Omar Berrada (researcher and curator), Ali Essafi (filmmaker and researcher), Pablo La Parra (Coordinator of the Research Department at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola), Manuel Asín (Artistic Director of Punto de Vista)
For a fiction essay Film conference with Léa Morin
This presentation will specifically use extracts from films digitized by Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola within the framework of the partnership with Punto de Vista.
25th September 1967, Karim Idriss, a young Moroccan filmmaker wrote a letter to the rector of the Łódź Film School in Poland. It was an application for admission. In it, he set out his career and his present struggles for a Moroccan cinema, something in which he was actively participating. A few years later he wrote a letter to the Moroccan Journal of Culture, Souffles, about his documentary (which would be banned) Les enfants du Haouz (1970), a free speech film about the marginalised adolescents in Morocco. Despite extensive enquiries, we have been unable to trace this film, the same is true for the last film made in Poland by Karim: Et l’exil de tous les jours.
Based on these two letters, on missing films, on documents, photos, archives and dozens of film clips and rushes, we will talk of films that will never be screened: films not yet traced, lost, banned, destroyed, unfinished films, rushes and even films still at the project stage or simply ideas. They will take us from Poland to Iraq, from the Berrechid psychiatric hospital to the Port of Casablanca, from the Hay Mohammadi shanty towns towards the rural regions of the country. There are still traces of these movements. Labels on a reel, a camera model on a photo shoot, a student’s diploma, a few lines in a CV or in a press article, and images exhumed bit by bit.
How can things be pieced together from this material? How can these tentative fragments be reassembled? How can one possibly think about writing a story for the cinema when it carries a series of erosions, omissions, deletions and disappearances? How can one include uncertainty, attempts and trial and error? How is it possible to preserve these films that do not exist? Would it be possible to make use of film restoration methodologies in order to preserve traces of the absent? What place should this work directed at political and aesthetic recomposition be given in fiction? Is it possible to restore and rekindle today the desire to make films and the dreams of revolution embraced by these young filmmakers in order to propose the invention of new spaces for our futures? And if the archives were actually spaces for reinvention?... Léa Morin
Léa Morin is an independent curator, researcher and programmer. She participates in projects (publishing, exhibitions and restoration) that bring together researchers, artists and technicians. Her research focuses mainly on the circulation of ideas, forms, aesthetics and political and artistic struggles during the period of independence (the 1960s and 1970s). She is a member of the team of “Archives Bouanani: Une Histoire du cinéma au Maroc” (Rabat) and of Talitha, an association dedicated to the recirculation of sound and physical works (Rennes). She has designed the archive-sharing website CINIMA3: Lodz-Casablanca (www.cinima3.com).
Persons from cinema: first person singular Talk by Paulino Viota
In the field of the documentary, which is what this festival is all about, a trend which some have called “autobiographical” or even “self-absorbed” has been developing of late. It consists of films which address the lives of their authors or their closest relatives. They feature everyday circumstances or the dramatic events of existence, death, illness, decrepitude, which deserve to be exorcised, we could say, by that great artifact which makes fast as it ousts that is cinema. This trend lodges us in the sphere of ordinary lives, far from the familiar, epic heroism found, for instance, in America, America (Elia Kazan, 1963). Epic is that which deserves to be related, but young documentary filmmakers have discovered that the difficulty and art of living, in any life, is worthy of being told.
But America, America can be seen as a documentary, as a reconstruction, both faithful and fanciful, of the life of the author’s uncle. That leads us to other great fiction filmmakers who have also turned on themselves, who have deemed that their life experience deserves to be published. Very few have been brave enough to try out this mirror-cinema; only the cases of Fellini and Godard spring to mind. But what is interesting about these examples is that while they approach the autobiographical documentary, because they too lack heroic greatness, they distance themselves from such films through their authors’ highly unique personalities and their downright mastery of cinematographic expression.
Due to this twofold antithetical relationship with documentaries, we thought it might be worthwhile holding a talk about Federico Fellini, who took this introspection further than anyone else in his films. His is an enthralling case, because the filmmaker portrayed himself at different levels; first through lookalikes, playing a kind of hide-and-seek with himself (Moraldo, Marcello, Guido Anselmi, Snàporaz, Pippo Battistella; in I vitelloni, La dolce vita, 8 ½, La città delle donne, Ginger e Fred) and then actually appearing in person (Block-notes di un regista, I clowns, Roma, Intervista). Reflecting on this set of unparalleled films can shed a new, perhaps more revealing, light on this world of the first-person documentary which poses questions for the festival. Paulino Viota
Paulino Viota (Santander, 1948) is the author of the feature films Contactos (1970), a work restored by Filmoteca Española in 2010 and which is part of the Collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; Duración (1970), also in the museum collection; Con uñas y dientes (1977-78); and Cuerpo a cuerpo (1982). His complete works, which include a number of short films made between 1966 and 1974, have been published by Intermedio DVD. From the early eighties onwards, Viota has devoted himself to studying and teaching filmmaking. He was a professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona, at CECC-Centre d’Estudis Cinematogràfics de Catalunya, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian) and at Filmoteca de Cantabria. He has given conferences in the leading cultural and film institutions of Spain.
