Documentary Films - Competition 2005 / El cielo gira / Spain 2005
After many years, the director returns to her native village of La Aldea in the northern corner of Spain, in order to film a portrait of a godforsaken region. She captures unique moments of fleeting life and demonstrates that, aided by a film camera, it is possible to change the everyday and the ordinary into something ravishing and exceptional.
Mercedes Álvarez was three years old when her parents decided to quit the village of La Aldea at the end of the 1960s. Today, only fourteen inhabitants live in this barren corner of northern Spain, a generation which is probably ending over a thousand years of uninterrupted settlement. The director, incidentally the last child to be born in La Aldea, returns after many years to the land of her ancestors to film a portrait of this God-forsaken land with its handful of settlers. With the patience of those who try to stop the flow of time, she records what are at first glance ordinary yet unique moments (villagers at work or in conversation), whose uniqueness lies in being situated between eternity and the approaching end. Life in La Aldea is disappearing before our eyes, just as inexorably as the bright colours on the canvases of the Old Masters, which the captivating visual images of this Spanish documentary distantly resemble. The film was one of this year’s three winners of the Tiger Award for Best Film at the Rotterdam IFF.
110 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Mercedes Alvarez
/ Screenplay Mercedes Alvarez, Arturo Redin
/ Dir. of Photography Alberto Rodriguez
/ Editor Sol López, Guadalupe Pérez
/ Producer José María Lara
/ Production koprodukce/coproduction: José María Lara PC, Alokatu S.L.
/ Contact José María Lara PC, Wanda Visión, S.A.
Mercedes Álvarez (b. 1966, La Aldea, Spain), after making the short film The African Wind (El viento africano, 1997), began studying documentary film at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. As a film editor she shared in the making of the noteworthy film by José Luis Guerín Work in Progress (En construcción, 2001) which was awarded several prizes at San Sebastian and was also screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2002.
José María Lara PC
Marques de Valdeiglesias 5, 28004, Madrid
Spain
Phone: +34 91 521 5365
Fax: +34 91 181 2338
E-mail: [email protected]
Wanda Visión, S.A.
Avda De Europa 16, Chalet I, 28224, Pozuelo-Madrid
Spain
Phone: +34 91 352 8376
Fax: +34 91 352 8371
E-mail: [email protected]
Mercedes Alvarez
Film Director
Arturo Redin
Screenwriter
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