Who would have thought that this pandemic would bring the confirmation of something that we already suspected? How were we to know that the films we were selecting for Un Impulso Colectivo represented a kind of foreshadowing of what was about to happen? When we decided at D’A to include Actos de primavera or La educación sentimental we had no idea that their intimate plots, their status as little private diaries, would be of such use to us, and bring such comfort in times when the movie theaters are closed and when it is impossible to hold the kind of festival we would like? At least these films, and My Mexican Bretzel and Video Blues too, which are just as much about family life and private universes, tell us that cinema goes on, albeit in different places, and that it is still exploring new languages. Also in the form of boundless, thrilling, amusing and intriguing fiction, as in As mortes, La reina de los lagartos and Violeta no coge el ascensor.
So young Spanish cinema, that which a few years ago was yelling and rebelling against everything, has entered a phase of melancholic resistance, as we saw last year, and which by this year’s edition has attained a formal strength, and an unstoppable energy. In short films this is also mixed with a muted cry, with a description of a political impasse that is affecting emotional relationships, the everyday lives we live and which now needs to be reappraised. It is as if La nuit d’avant or Una película hecha de, Os prexuizos da auga and Pol·len, among others, are revealing the hangover of all those revolutions that were not to be throughout all those years, but which did so with thoughts of a future in which everything would be possible again. The worldwide premiere of Girant per Sant Antoni, a brave telling of the state of affairs through the eyes of a Barcelona market —together with such combative shorts as Greata (Nàusea) and 16 de decembro—, confirm that everything has yet to be done. And film needs to play a fundamental role in that reconstruction: however that happens and at whatever cost.
Carlos Losilla
