Iván Z

The legendary Oleg Nikolaevitch Karavaichuk is the mysterious and moving subject of this loving film by the young director Duque. He was moved by the music the pianist composed for a film by Kira Muratova and is the first foreigner to win the trust of the eccentric and still active 89-year-old Russian.

A punk documentary which is, at the same time, a history of Catalonia, an analysis of its political situation in 2017, a comic lamentation on the milestones of the Procés —the broken, unsuccessful path started October 1st which eventually should've ended with a true declaration of independence from Spain—, and a chaotic festival of references to pop culture, from Dumbo to Salvador Dalí.

In a corner of Barcelona, a Filipino woman performs every day a ritual that the observer cannot understand. There are connections everywhere, but hidden. But there is no attempt to explain the act in progress, but to grant a place where the performer can show it in all its complexity. The observer experiences the fascination of an outsider, registering her intimate choreography and suggesting, with delicate lightness, the potential connections, as if a veil was torn.

Trees are everything. In a settlement near the Russian-Finnish border, a traditional family keeps shamanistic rituals alive. The children play in the same forest where photos nailed to trees remind us of Stalin's bloody repression. Spirituality and politics meet in this intuitive montage of poetic impressions, historical material, nature shots, family scenes and probing testimony.

After an accident that leaves him bedridden for two months, the filmmaker retrieves discard images he's been collecting for eight years on his computer's hard drive. With them he develops an intimate and poetic film, consisting of portraits of friends, walks through Barcelona and a trip to his native country, Venezuela, where chaos imposes its aesthetic appeal. A complex and fragmented film that shows the world of the filmmaker that sometimes happens to be as absurd and miraculous as a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

Two unconnected stories that gravitate around literature.

While Andrés searches for old movies in Mozambique, he feels haunted by ominous premonitions, anticipating bad news coming from Venezuela, his country, where his father is gravely ill.

How Alejandro, an artisan, and Kiara, his seven-year-old daughter, live in a small rented room in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.

A collective effort about the recent history of Spain. A distorting mirror, a radiography, a rotten but exquisite corpse: the blood, the sweat, the dandruff of a country in the shape of a large and extended bull skin. A parade of freaks. The ridiculous independence of the upstairs neighbor, the sovereignty demanded by an insane parrot prisoner in its open cage. Football, potato omelette, kings and safaris. Things not to do again. Guerrilla cinema. Hysteria of Spain.

When Robert Wilson was a child, he told his teacher he wanted to be a king. The film takes this premise as a point of departure to explore the figure of monarchs through the lens of the theatre of the absurd (Gogol, Jarry, Beckett). A satirical triptych that reflects on the philosophical condition of being in power.

The Canet de Mar Theatre Group, which includes young people of diverse backgrounds and situations, rehearses Chantal Maillard's play Medea. Spontaneous gestures, distracted, knowing, or defiant glances, reveal a tense calm that gives a new dimension to the original text. Who are Medea's children? Andrés Duque, always lucid, returns to D'A with just the right ingredients to speak about contemporaneity from the seemingly untimely.

Agadiri and Oussama, two Moroccan friends, laze around and survive while the camera explores their bodies and faces. But things are by no means simple. Both have only been in Spain for a short period and are facing a supposedly temporary situation, which must culminate in their futures being defined in the midst of a pandemic. Filmed indoors, Monte Tropic gradually travels towards a more indefinite and dreamlike space to question the memories and desires of these young people, whose inactivity vindicates their right to be above the disastrous political use of their situation.

“How many hours could you spend watching this card?”, Pedro P. tells José Sirgado on the film ARREBATO (Rapture, Ivan Zulueta). I keep also my favorite album from my childhood. It’s called “Man, Races and Customs”. Every page reveals new interpretations, sometimes they are imprecise and weird about who we are and what the world is. – Andrés Duque.