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During the quarantine, some gave up on buying toilet paper or making bread. Juan Cavestany (Madrid, 53 years old) has made a movie, Madrid, interior, “Created between March 24 and April 24, in the harshest time of the pandemic,” says by phone. In this period, numerous filmmakers have made short films (even short film contests have already been launched during the confinement forced by covid-19), but Madrid, interior It is the first Spanish feature film raised, shot and finished in quarantine. Of guerrilla cinema, of which he has become a benchmark in Spain, Cavestany, director, screenwriter and playwright, knows quite a bit with titles like I have boats (2010), Mr (2012), People in places (2013) or That sensation (2016). However, he had never made movies so fast, nor with so many collaborators. Madrid, interior, which begins with a quote from Dylan Thomas – “Do not enter meekly into this quiet night” -, has been made with the collaboration of a hundred people who shot small pieces that together represent 80 minutes of a portrait of the mood during the worst weeks of the pandemic.
The seed of the film is in a video card exchange between Cavestany and the actor Luis Bermejo, that a clown character has been built in networks. “We began to record on video, and pass us images of banal moments, such as sleeping on the sofa or brushing our teeth, in those first days of confinement,” recalls the director. And he laughs: “Like the audiovisual correspondence between Víctor Erice and Abbas Kiarostami.” Cavestany decided to expand the field and reach out to more people. He asked that they be recorded “in moments of intimacy, but it was not a matter of generating sequences, or doing comedy, or having a previous writing; simply, that their waiting in silence be shown at home ”. As in a shock wave, what was only “filming stranded people” grew. “And I started with a provisional title, People on site. Then I changed it [se ha quedado como nombre del primer capítulo], because it sounds like a joke, and nothing is further from my intention“
In the process, the payroll of collaborators increased. There are friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, parents of someone who knows someone. And yes, among those friends there are celebrities. Cavestany prefers not to reveal all the names, because the appearance of one “supposes a great surprise that I want the public to enjoy.” And at the same time he lives with doubts about what he describes as “the dilemma of familiar faces.” “It would really give me a lot of advantage to take advantage of this situation to to sell a product with celebrities that I have had access to because of life that do not respond to any merit on my part ”. In this list there are many companions of the theater and cinema: in addition, obviously of himself – who is the one who appears most in the footage – and Luis Bermejo, it is intuited (most of the known faces are foreshortened) to Antonio de la Torre, Malena Alterio, Pepón Nieto, Álvaro Fernández Armero, playwright Juan Mayorga, José Coronado, Manuel Bartual, Coque Malla, Javier Cámara, Anna R. Costa, Alberto San Juan, María Pujalte, musician Aaron Rux, Javier del Pino doing his radio show … And, it couldn’t be less, Jon Garaño, Jose Mari Goenaga and Aitor Arregi, the directors of The infinite trench, the great Spanish film about a long running of the bulls. “It looks like People in places in its structure, only this I have done remotely. But that one was greatly transcended by the list of many well-known faces making a very extreme cinema. Here they cannot be nor do I want them to be the hook ”.
Madrid, interior shows the best Cavestany, the mood maker. As much as editing is one of the most analyzed tools in cinema today, it still amazes how a filmmaker can construct the radiography of an emotion through videos of apparent banal acts. In the film there are many children, pajamas, silences, doubts, conversations about everyday life, people saying that the covid-19 has already passed, music … “It is a documentary not about the coronavirus, but about the intimate experience of the confinement that is obviously transformed into a film with dramatic, comical moments, especially touched by introspection, waiting, fear at times. There is more music and silence than dialogue, and that has increased poetics ”. And despite the title, it was not only filmed in the Spanish capital. “The name defines a mood, but there are videos that come from London, New York and other Spanish cities such as Seville, Barcelona or Valencia.”
Max winner for Urtain something guilty is recognized by his state of mind. “I am not suffering much … at times. I have days of anxiety, of course, and in February I was sick, but I can’t complain, “he confesses. “I quickly understood that I had to take care of myself physically and keep working.” When the state of alarm came, Cavestany and Álvaro Fernández Armero were developing a new series for Movistar after the success of their Shame. “We stopped momentarily, and Álvaro stood with Quarantine diaries for TVE-1. At the same time, I was finishing post-production for my film. An optical effect, with Carmen Machi and Pepón Nieto. These days I work on the montage on Skype ”. And now comes the premiere of Madrid, interior. “It would seem strange to me to try to monetize something made by so many people in an altruistic way and that was never born with a crematistic intention. I just want it to be seen. ”
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