The Search for Emak Bakia

The countenance of Joseba Sarrionandia is multi-faceted, not only for having dabbled in all literary forms of expression, but for having been capable of creating his own imagery, composed of endless worlds. Thus, several of the elements appearing in the literary world will undoubtedly appear here: the sea, the port, childhood, trains, uprooting, war, destruction, love, drifting, pain, fantasy, mystery, initiation, torture...

Is it possible to travel twice to the same memory? The filmmaker built a cabin on an isolated riverbank, just opposite his childhood island, which had disappeared under the water after the construction of a dam. The goal was to go back to that place, which had become invisible. Only the trees of the island where he’d played stood firm in the middle of the water, like the masts of a broken toy boat, so the air was the only space left, the only vestige of the past to be conquered. This film is a diary of a castaway in memories: four months of a Walden experience in a lost paradise with two hens, a small vegetable garden and a clock that stopped forever at 11.36 and 23 seconds.

“Night will fall fourteen times in this film. We will count them.” So begins this nocturnal, musical journey—a voyage that drifts through the artistic vision of the Basque artist Jorge Oteiza, and which is dominated, above all, by an “Interior, Night” setting: the Basilica of Arantzazu. It is there that the longest night unfolds, beside the sanctuary’s organ, where filmmaker Oskar Alegria shuts himself away to recount these fourteen nights to pianist Iñar Sastre—summoning him to conjure, through the keys, images he wont see. From this challenge emerges a collection of fourteen moons, fourteen darknesses, and fourteen mysteries that form a single frieze. Fourteen, like the number of apostles Oteiza managed to place on the façade of that temple in an artistic challenge that broke all the rules; and fourteen because, as he himself put it, “there was no room for any more.”

Zinzindurrunkarratz, third feature film by Oskar Alegria (Emak Bakia baita, Zumiriki), summarizes in its title the idea it pursues: the role of sound in the construction of our memories and our memory. Zinzin is a valley where the wind blows lightly and its lyrics represent that sound in Basque language. Durrundurrun is a chasm without end, where a falling stone is lost in that long echo, and Kurruzkarratz, is the peak where lightning always strikes, with its roar and tear full of R’s.