VIKINGLAND

Xurxo Chirro

Spain 99 min Documentary

Synopsis

Xurxo Chirro has a passion for record keeping and works in the Archives Department of the local television company. During research, he came upon four video tapes that amounted to 16 hours of rushes and were titled Vikingland. Luis – an expatriate seaman and a migrant like so many of his fellow Galician countrymen – is the hero of this quite peculiar video saga. This is, indeed, no epic tale but a combination of anecdotes and Luis’ persistence. Between learning how to handle the video camera he has just acquired and the long hours working on the ferry-boat which sails from Denmark to Sylt Island in Germany, where he has been hired as a warehouseman, Luis recorded himself without respite for a whole winter. It is, on the one hand, a tribute of sorts to home movies and the way they conceal the frantic desire to explain an existence otherwise devoid of any self-image. On the other hand, it is precisely the opportunity to exhaustively disclose the jests and scansions of a life paradoxically secluded within a journey that increases the forced distance from home.

Filmmaker

Xurxo Chirro

Xurxo Chirro (A Guarda, Spain, 1973) has a BA degree in Art History at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He worked in the Axencia Audiovisual Galega and AGADIC, entities dependent on the Xunta de Galicia. He writes film criticism and collaborates with several newspapers and reviews. Besides, he works as cinematographic script-writer and he is the director of the documentary films Os señores do vento (2008), 36/75, 13 Pozas (2009), Cellular Movie (2010) and Vikingland (2011).

Filmography: Jeanette (curt, 2016), Une histoire seule (2013, D'A 2014), Vikingland (2011, D’A 2013)

Xurxo Chirro

Film information

Original Title: Vikingland
Director: Xurxo Chirro
Script: Xurxo Chirro
Country: Spain
Year: 2011
Format: Digital
Length: 99 min
Language: German and Galician
Subtitles: Spanish
Edition: 2013