film and television
A flash in the storm
By Jose Angel Lazaro
The 24th edition of the Malaga Spanish and Ibero-American Film Festival closed in March of last year with the reading of a list of winners that literally surprised locals and strangers alike. In other words, both to the most commercial sectors supported by the large television platforms, and to those located on the margins of the audiovisual business, made up of the most artiesindependent and combative of the panorama of Spanish cinema.
In addition to the six prizes reaped by The belly of the sea (the belly of the sea), by Agustí Villaronga (author, in principle, with a profile and filmography somewhat removed from the most common products at the Malaga festival), the double award he won brave flash, the first film by Extremaduran director Ainhoa Rodríguez: the Biznaga de Plata special prize from the jury and the award for best production in the official competition section, for its editor, José Luis Picado. Rodríguez’s film surprised by the mere fact of competing in this official section, since, after being selected as the opening film of the 50th edition of the prestigious Rotterdam International Film Festival (International Film Festival Rotterdam" xml:lang="en">IFFR), it seemed thus distilled its quintessence of cinema undergroundexclusive to programmers, film curators and other select species of very coffee-growing gafapasta. However, after his passing and surprising loot at the Andalusian festival, the circle began to widen significantly and, suddenly, brave flash he was in more worldly conversation than might be expected. Suddenly, there was a discussion about a work that, by its very nature, content and artistic value, gives rise to many conversations of varied and deep interest, but that seemed condemned to lack the dramatic and necessary factor for these discussions to happen properly: that the potential agents and conversationalists of the world of the cinema see the film. Fortunately, this factor was occurring.
The film (even before its success in Malaga) had special screenings scheduled at festivals in keeping with its supposedly exquisite and alternative character, such as Gijón (FICX), where, in addition, a master class on the creative process of the film by the director would be held. The night of the special screening in Gijón, which included a conversation with the director at the end of the screening, an isolated depression at high levels (DANA) lashed the Principality of Asturias from one side to the other. It was Monday night and, after a year without a festival in theaters due to the health crisis, and two years since the banishment of projections to the usual shopping centers far from the center, the strange film of the girl from Extremadura could be too small for the room 11 of the Yelmo multiplex cinema in the La Calzada shopping center in Gijón, equipped with more than three hundred seats. And yet it didn’t happen. A year after one, two years after the other, in the midst of a cold drop, with the rain and the wind getting heavier on a frigid Monday night in November, the public attended. And, after the kind introduction by the festival director, Alejandro Díaz Castaño, the flash crossed the big screen in room 11 and the public (a good part of the more than two hundred attendees who had withdrawn their tickets) stayed for a discussion with the director . And then, again, locals and strangers joined in surprised communion before the images and sounds of the film poem dedicated to the women of Tierra de Barros, and spoke about the film, about its themes, its messages, its processes and, about everything about their characters.
Rodríguez’s film is an unclassifiable piece for the usual uses in registration forms for contests, funds, announcements and old shelves of video stores. From a place where time does not pass, a universe of dreams, longings, nightmares, desires and pains unfolds with the strokes of pure cinema. The characters flourish, the contradictions collide, the invisible worlds rebel and, in the background, an old rancid and macho Spain fades but remains, stony, in its hardness and its rust. At the end of the projection people want to know. Know what the director intended. The director returns the answers in the form of more questions. Many viewers assume they are not sure what they have seen, but say they enjoyed it. The director celebrates it and shares the experience of the first showing in which the protagonists, women with no training as actresses or previous cinematographic vocation, looked at themselves in the mirror of the cinema screen. They didn’t understand either. Nor did they know how to explain the mechanism deployed there. But they saw each other. In the mirror-kaleidoscope of that flash, they recognized each other. And in that movie theater, one with the other, for the umpteenth time and, nevertheless, for the first time, they met.
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