Alas/Tierra

Follows the trail of taxidermic pieces collected by The Manchester Museum during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

On October 4th, 2007 Arantza, the director of the film, was detained and taken to prison. She remembers a few things about those days: endlessly walking around the prison exercise yard, swimming competitions, Rasha's prison journey... After 918 nights locked up, Arantza is set free. From then onwards, she recorded her memories and doubts, which are heard throughout the documentary as a kind of fragmented memoir.

The wolf no longer inhabits the land that once formed part of its territory, and only through its outlines can we get closer to it; remnants of wolf traps, predator urine imported from the US, a dung-hill used to feed scavenger birds and archers that shoot at replicas of animals. Reserve constructs a story about the fragile balance of a territory after the disappearance of the predator, where the complex co-existence between humans and non-humans presents a distinctly marked anthropogenic ecosystem.

On the slopes of the Navarrese Pyrenees, the construction of the Itoiz dam in the 1990s flooded seven villages and three nature reserves. A strip of bare land, 592 metres above sea level, today marks a dividing line within the landscape of the valley. Below that level, the water; above it, life goes on.

Province of Ciudad Real, Spain, December 29, 1990. During the annual march to the Herrera de la Mancha prison, held in support of the members of the terrorist gang ETA imprisoned there, the Basque rock band Negu Gorriak holds a concert, which is recorded, edited on video and turned into a tool of vindication. Decades later, a film crew tries to elaborate a personal essay around this event and its meaning.

Almost two decades ago, the Itoiz dam flooded seven villages and three natural reserves on the Pyrenean hillside in Navarra. The ecologist group Solidari@s con Itoiz registered the fight against its construction. Today, those who were there dream of the land lying beneath the water on video. Their voices and gestures come together to tell the tale of an individual and collective mourning still suffered today.

On January 24th, 1954, Mamaddi, aged 22, took a boat from Le Havre to New York. But her journey began earlier in her hometown movie theater, with images coming off the screen and never disappearing: a beautiful Cadillac, a young woman, the blue sky.

The arrival of two Slovenian bears in the Pyrenees of Navarre alters their balance. The bear has been a natural inhabitant of the Pyrenees for a million years. However, its disappearance led to the transformation of the area. The presence of these new visitors brings old conflicts back to the fore.

In an attempt to reclaim pasture for their cattle, the inhabitants of an ecovillage in Navarre decide to cut down a pine grove planted as part of a state-funded reforesting initiative. In this fierce and sensory work, the filmmakers capture an adversarial process which uses deforestation techniques to transform a territory.

Entrails, a flock of sheep, one spring. The cooing of doves and songs hummed. Some vultures, bones, flowers and many hands. Hands which feed, milk, stroke, shear, film; hands that kill. Hands which inhabit the doubts and contradictions about using other species.

In the aftermath of the death of the filmmaker Chantal Akerman on October 5th, 2015 ten directors remember, rethink and reoccupy in their own way the imagination of the Belgian director. A small collective tribute from Barcelona and Iruña, made with love.

Two men measure the heights of pine trees. A woman listens to what the trees are saying. The children of the village set up the camp. A cloud of digital dots reveals the forest. The pines have said that we can ask. They always called this place 'Paraíso'. Machines will come soon.

Xulia was getting treatment at a rehab center back in 1985, when something happened that changed her life. Years after that, she published 'Imperfect Future', a memoir turned into a book. This short film is a dive in what's left of all that.

In her escape, M. takes refuge in an abandoned house. Amidst the echoing sounds resulting from her efforts to make herself comfortable, she hears some footsteps outside and decides to open the door. A fortuitous visitor, who will become her companion-in-shelter, steps into the house.

The film delves into the work processes of an archaeological team from the Aranzadi Science Society at the San Adrián Tunnel site. Interspersing this observation with archival materials, the film explores the relationships between archaeology and museography, as well as the different ways in which these two practices produce the displacement of objects.