Elena López Riera, director of “El Agua”, and Carla Simón, director of “Alcarràs” held a meeting on Monday afternoon. Meeting held at Lys cinemas Valencia will talk about cinema in general and its own cinema in particular. Simón and López Riera interviewing journalist Pepa Blanes in front of an audience filling the stalls they remembered their beginning as filmmakers and we talked about acommon aspects of their filmography, rooted in the place of origin of both directors and the role of women in their own films.
Regarding how they came to make films, López Riera emphasized that he loves his “town” Orihuela, where his first feature film takes place, and has lived there for years, but this is a difficult place. to see their premiere movies. “I remember seeing ‘arctic circle lovers‘ and I’m hallucinating that things like that can be done. So I started researching and learned what this profession is.” In his case, Simón also stated that he “lived in the countryside and didn’t watch movies”. “I remember watching Unknown Code in high school. The ensuing discussion made me realize just how much the movie had to say before I knew it. With just one story, many things can be told through cinema.”
“city alcarras It’s not like I grew up in summer 1993, Next up is the Catalan director’s comment, this is my mother’s town. Although much has been said about rural life from the outside, I can portray Alcarràs from the inside because I spent a lot of time at my uncle’s house planting peaches and saw the good and the bad. For a while what I want to show, where to put the cameras etc. I think.
love and hate
On this dilemma between loving and hating where you come from and where you come back to work, López Riera admitted: “counting things from the inside is complicated”. “It’s dangerous to wait for the people you shoot with to gain legitimacy,” he assured her, “the important thing is to address the complexity of what’s being filmed. Also, you don’t have to leave your city to feel rootless, you can feel cut off from your own home, that’s something that excites me in Alcarràs, domestic exile”.
The moderator of the interview asked the Valencian director about the women speaking in front of the camera. This, how these women do not feel legitimate to speak up and how Elena wants to enable them to escape gender roles. ““I don’t know if you can escape,” said the director. Most people didn’t want to be in the movie because they said they couldn’t talk.
“It was very important to reinvigorate this place in Alcarràs, and the idea was to convey that rural women are overweight, help their husbands, endure everything emotionally, and also give a little hope to the new generation,” Simón said. Additional. My cousin is part of the feminist community of AlcarràsYou notice that the discourse has changed”.
López Riera later shared, “Sometimes I feel that it’s up to us women to give an answer, it’s a huge weight and it helps me to share doubts.” I think it’s important not to seem like you’ve made everything clear.”
“Daughter is like her mother”
In this sense, Blanes brought up how “Water” talks about it. some women’s “bad reputation” is inherited through this family. You always hear the saying, “A girl is like a mother”. I think through these women – Luna and Barbara Lennie – this They become heroes.” The director replied, “There are inherited stigmas and that is how society is organized.” These women are sometimes hateful, sometimes not, they have grays, they are complex, that’s the important part of a character.”
Both “El agua” and “Alcarràs” – there are several Goya nominations this year.– some of their main roles have non-professional translators. As Blanes points out, actors and actresses who have never acted but have experience with history and space.
“The casting process was very parallel, we told each other about our progress,” Simón recalled. In my case, I wanted to respect the Catalan spoken in the Alcarràs region and there are not many players speaking it. I didn’t want someone to force or imitate this language.” He also emphasized “The farmer is the farmer” and “the inimitable hands, the plant. Women were the hardest characters to find.”
“They spent five minutes apologizing for being there during casting, and another five minutes I supported them and it was very difficult for them to step in. They didn’t care what they were going to do and were afraid of doing wrong. The actresses who were chosen through the movie learned to empower, to leave their children to their parents, and they felt they had the right to do that. because they were making a movie and then they were promoting it”, added the director from Alcarràs.
“Many women came to the cast to tell us something, their lives, and the script was heavily nurtured by the stories of these women,” López Riera later said. You are aware of the enormous amount of unconfessed abuse. They spoke so intimately that it made you wonder how few questions these women were asked. Just “what do you want?” we were asking.. “It was a very long process because we both caught the pandemic,” he said.
Change in footage
This is what Simón said about the cast of “Alcarràs”. 9,000 people saw: “I wanted to make real connections, I rented a house, we met for three months, we rehearsed, we improvised, and we rehearsed the movie last month. This is a part that I enjoy as you create situations with great intimacy with my camera to go to the shoot as a family”.
Another challenge posed by the moderator to Elena López Riera and Carla Simón was that the dynamics on set changed when teams were led by young women like them. “In the first week of filming, everyone thinks I have no idea what I’m doing,” said the film’s director. alcarras-. I didn’t like this before but now I’m having a good time. It’s about the entry of doubt into filmmaking, the entry of women into directing. We have more courage to say “I don’t know”.
El Agua’s director is in both his first feature film and in your previous shorts They often work with the same people and accompany the production well. “It’s not the same movie industry as it always is,” he concluded.
The meeting concluded with the two directors reflecting on the nominations, the awards, and how they were a source of anxiety and tension. “We’re just talking about successes, we don’t talk about fear, uncertainty, a bit like on Instagram,” López Riera complained. He guarantees that the most complicated thing for him in the whole process of watching a movie after the shooting is over, is the time he spends at the festivals. “You have to have emotional strength and learn to manage your own expectations,” added Simon.