“If the camera is searched in the document, it can lead to looting”

The veteran filmmaker focused on the sights of this suburb of Barcelona History of the Good Valleya poetic documentary that won the Jurado Special Prize at the San Sebastian Festival and will be released in cinemas on February 13.

“Vallbona is a district that is sought after by the mountains, the river and the simple carriage and train tracks that have turned it into an island with a single light,” continues Guerin. “Yes, this includes islamiento, that has also been preserved, aside from phenomena like him boom property. In this way, it remains as the only agricultural land that exists in Barcelona, ​​learning the forms of life that have been eradicated from the urban centers.

Please. Why are you interested in this “island”?

Response. It’s all part of a MACBA assignment to participate in an installation around disadvantaged neighborhoods. I did a little piece in Super-8 about Vallbona, of which some images were taken at the beginning History of the Good Valleyand felt a desire to deepen in reality This place is so unknown, small and humblewho lives between the countryside and the city.

»Vallbona contains the eco world these days. It is like the growth of a tree that allows you to interpret the whole tree as you observe it.

Peace and humanism

History of the Good Valley corresponds to the summary of the diptych on the intimate transformation of Barcelona p In the construction industry (2001), Guerin’s early take on the topic of gentrification. The film discussed the creation of a housing block in the Raval district, focusing both on the “anecdote of its construction” and what arose around the old, the old and the new. Both works funcionan como a mixture of imaginations and social, generational, identity and urban conflicts; from “peace and humanism”.

P. History of the Good Valley if built, how In the construction industrystarting with a colorful chorus of voices. What criteria should be followed to understand the human morphology of the neighborhood?

R. It was a choice of those people who give them an identity in Vallbona. También aendí a the quality that movie characters can offer mebut always looking for the right look around. Therefore, the Catalan “payesía”, which was given to the Roma community, passing through various migration groups, including Ukrainian refugees, must be present.

P. Memory is an important theme in the film…

R. Yes, you have two people with you. First, Antonio el Carbonero, who witnessed the birth of this district. Second, Nicolás, who is currently losing his memory and is chained to the blocks of the new dormitory town. This neighborhood lives between these two cities, It contains these two things: the original memory and the new reality associated with a life of social protection.

P. The document is presented as a unfinished business. What does it mean to use this idea of ​​work in progress?

R. Generic ‘un film’ irritates me every day, so I’m looking for alternatives. En History of the Good Valley I show the viewer how the film is made. Let’s start with the observations shot in Super-8, now we will move on to this casting where the characters and stories to develop later come from. As a film under construction, like its own neighborhood, its geography and identity are transformed.

P. How do you get intimidated by characters in a movie?

R. With time. The film was made for two years, but runs for a few days, which is hard to understand from capitalist logic. For me Non-productive days are very importantwhen going to the room to chat at the bar with the neighbors or walk around.

»Achieving a valuable moment for film depends a lot on the time reversed in your cameras, on how you relate to the other. It’s an exchange. Really, It’s not so much a film about them, it’s about them. Even if they don’t have a conscience, they are collaborators and dialoguers, some excellent.

P. What is the work ethic in times of stress?

R. For each moment, a dialogue, gesture or story has only one possible point of view. It takes finding the distance and precise optics to see what you want. You have to keep in mind how the presence of the camera affects or conditions the relationship with your characters. If the camera is very close, a robbery may occur or you can denaturalize things. These are decisions that you will immediately feel as a filmmaker.

»It’s a film where neighborhood meant only that it was very close to its inhabitants, which often made it very introspective. But depth of field including reflections in the wind has a primal function, lest we forget that we are talking about collection.

P. A multinational collection. How could I work with so many idioms?

R. There are 12 idioms in the film. Many times I filmed without knowing what they were saying. At certain moments I realized that there was some truth to it, but the content eluded me. He then joined me in the editing room and translated the dialogues.

P. How important is editing in this film?

R. My working method consists of alternating assembly and assembly phases. When traveling, there are always many questions to deal with: logistics, relations with neighbors, crew… However, The gathering is a moment of stillness.

»I sit in my house and I can evaluate the importance of a gesture, a word, a phrase, a look… This is when you have a real awareness of what happened and you have time to interpret it. What happened to the sentence for a few seconds of silence? How does it reflect in this way on something that might be unintentional? Also include the threads you are pulling out from the back.

P. That’s not the usual way of working in a movie theater, is it?

R. No, that’s for sure. History of the Good Valley It’s a film that feeds so much and involves a lot of complexity in its production. Film financing is part of the dispenser, the guide, and those are things I don’t keep. What I have is a permanent training process. Guess what the project continues thanks to the help of volunteer friends and a little more. Then Jonás Trueba came in with his producer Los Ilusos and now we had a main cover and a team of three.

P. What else did Trueba bring to the project?

R. At the end of the day, we enjoy the cinema a lot. I live in France and when he comes to present his films we call and talk and he always gives me his hand to help me. With the clan well underway, I’ll take it back to you. Jonás was very generous and very respectful and made very apt observations. He is an ideal producer because he sees cinema from the position of a filmmaker. In fact, it is a film with a simple method, Quien prevents him (2021).

P. What is classic cinephilia today?

R. Remains of a shipwreck. You do not want to edit the journal folder. The cinema was a socially central space for years and is now somewhat peripheral. But nothing more than to accept this development. There are directors who make every movie because cinema did not exist. For me, it would form part of the audiovisual.

»The difference between cinema and audiovisual does not apply support, which is something very banal, even with the way of thinking and understanding cinematography. I couldn’t own a movie like that Embarrassment because it is Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece and yet there is one with the same title. This is something that worries me.

P. He was classified as a humanist in the film. What does it mean to talk about humanism in these times of polarization?

R. Humanism is the opposite of the social world, where questions of reality are completely eliminated and human beings are reduced to a single category. And this is something that also occurs in films obsessed with discourse: ambiguities, contradictions, mysteries, including beauty, disappear.

»Cinema, as I understand it, must remain stable as a consequence of reality. From this point of viewI try to avoid drinking for my own people. Even if I say something about what I feel deeply, I can also have a very valuable philosophy or poetry.

The most fragile sector

P. Are you concerned about the political climate we are experiencing today?

R. Huge. There is an escape at the end of the film, an escape that is a synecdoche of the state of affairs. The population I filmed ultimately represents the most vulnerable sector in the face of the politics of social exclusion of emerging nationalisms.

»My film naturally confronts nationalismin the idea that it is understood that identity is a fixed, ecstatic attitude, like a course that must be established. But identity is the complete opposite, something in constant motion, always in mutation.

P. What do you think about the European project born to end nationalism?

R. Holen, with which Europe simultaneously demonstrates so many wrongs of imperialism, leaves me in a situation of deep humiliationde malestar hondo