(by Orianna Calderón)
Wednesday September 30th
What would you give in exchange for a dinner? With this variation from the potlatch tradition –the exchange among tribes in which the more you give, the more powerful you are- the first team managed to generate a connection with a young street vendor called Esaú. A parade of philosophical concerns took place this day, from Marcel Proust’s À la recherché du temps perdu to Munch’s Cry. After all, maybe everything we do is just a circuitous route in order to exit the Hegelian circle of absolute knowledge and get lost in the everlasting night that can be found deep in the eyes of another human being. Thursday
October 1st
A Dutch breakfast in Mexico. Trough Facebook and Myspace, we contacted a girl in The Netherlands who provided us with a list of what’s included in a typical Dutch breakfast. Next, we bought those items and we shared them with the members of the workshop. We were trying to subvert the impersonal nature of the social networks, turning this distant and anonymous interaction into something physical. At the end of the day, you can be farther from the person standing next to you and closer to one that’s miles away. It’s just a different kind of distance.
Friday October 2nd
As part of the second production, I found myself having dinner with four strangers in a Chinese restaurant. Johann and Mauricio, workshop fellows whom I had just met three days ago, Gaby -acupuncturist, photographer, nutritionist, excellent driver, The Beatles’ fan, Johann’s friend- and Gaby’s boyfriend, who happened to live near my place. By the time we were having dessert, we all have given each other at least a little piece of our subjectivity.
Monday October 5th
According to the western binomial way of thinking, everything has two sides: life and death, light and darkness, love and hate; but due to a hypocritical moralization, most people refuse to see the second one. That’s why we decided to explore the eschatological and the morbid side of food in our third project… the brutality that takes place before your steak is served, and the process that follows the steak’s intake. The result was an audiovisual product that demanded a deep sensorial engagement from the viewer, who might be bothered by the confrontation with something so natural and real.
Tuesday October 6th
Ok, but even though our proposal is basically experimental, we still want to tell stories, don’t we? In order to help us find that Ariadna’s thread called narrative structure, three strangers broke into a space that already had the atmosphere of a home. Those in charge of the storytelling workshop were the playwrights Juan Tovar and David Olguín, as well as the actor Erando González, mediator/master of ceremonies/interviewer/fulcrum of the lever. Borrowed from Jean de la Bruyère’s pen, the statement Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul (What a pity it is not to be capable of being on your own) was their incredibly pessimistic conclusion when trying to figure out how our documentary was to be carried out. I completely differ, even though I’m a person who absolutely loves loneliness; from my point of view, creating another possible reality alone is a beautiful experience, but when you share it with others and they begin to see characters, connections and actions in that possible world which isn’t physical yet, the creative process acquires the strength of a rapture. Indeed, one of the ingredients that make the dish we are cooking so delicious is its collective nature.
Wednesday October 7th
The standpoint, the construction of characters, the atmospheres and the effect that we want to have on the spectators, were some of the issues raised by the writer Monica Lavín and the playwright Cordelia Dvorak, who gave us a lecture, still in pursuit of an structure. By the end of the session, something had begun to take shape. We wanted to meet the other but as a character who had constructed herself/himself by joining little fragments, assimilating borrowed ideas and making sense of the mathematical impossibilities of our world. But now, we had to bring that back to the starting point, i.e. food.
Thursday October 8th
According with the Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, our primordial experience as human beings is the encounter with the other. But we are too afraid of looking directly into another person’s eyes and soul; as a matter of fact, we find it difficult even to look inside of us. We are always searching for roles, patterns and recipes for behaving properly; and society -which means all of us- finds it easier to create thousands of third terms (family, school, office, factory, public transport, weather, birthday parties and, in Foucault’s terms, even sexuality) than to allow direct contact between two human beings. Taking this into account, the Do-it-yourself kind of guide provided by Pedro and Sandra during this session, didn’t seem to me like a mechanism truly capable of destroying the barriers between us. The lecture had enlightening aspects, such as the analysis of Tzvetan Todorov’s different types of travelers (from the missionary to the tourist who prefers photographing buildings rather than people) or the generation of poetic moments in the midst of urban drift so as to subvert selfishness. However, the latter was oversimplified by means of occurrences such as I have seen a UFO. Approaching somebody in the street, randomly, with a lie as your shield and a plan as your mask, means nothing apart from a brief superficial encounter. Not that this is necessarily bad or negligible; it’s just insufficient.
Friday,October 9th
A little bit of a shock: New teams were formed so as to start working on the part of the documentary that will be shot in Mexico, but three of the participants had no role and decided to leave the project. Awkward silence, sideways glances, slight air of disbelief; by 2 o’clock, we were just six trainees, plus Diego and Guillermo. Monday, October 12th After one of those weekends in which synapse levels rise exponentially, Allin, Adriana and I came up with an initial proposal for the documentary. Meeting with Diego and Guillermo in Adriana’s temporary, half-empty flat: Something is not working…somehow it’s too controlled… we are kind of obsessed with lonely characters, overlooking the fact that there are lots of sociable people in Mexico… we need a cup of coffee…we need to go through it again. Maybe if we think of a relative…what about aunt Amada? Hajar Moussa arrived in the evening from Morocco. Tuesday,
October 13th
First meeting in English, since Hajar and Linda Bannink from the Netherlands, joined the team. We presented our theoretical interest: Each person constructs his/her self, depending on the ways that they find to fill their emptiness (i.e. to satisfy their physical or emotional hunger). Therefore, to explore the relation that people develop with food provides us with a way to know the other in a deeper level: based on the mechanisms they explore in order to fulfill their desires. A list of characters was made, as well as a four-stages methodology to approach them. We also wrote down specific arrangements to meet the characters, without camera, before Sunday.
Wednesday, October 14th
First recording exercise. Adriana’s mother came from Oaxaca early in the morning (at around 7 o’clock), with lots of culinary gifts -tlayudas, mezcal, quesillo, chapulines- that we all shared in this first lunch together. In spite of an initial awkwardness -the whole situation was kind of Kafkaesque to be sincere- we managed to break the ice and, all of a sudden we were talking about our dreams, mixing English with Spanish and laughter with tears. It’s always good to start this kind of exploration with yourself. Friday, October 16th We shared the characters’ profiles and new teams were formed. A much clearer structure was also outlined. A bit of a shock once more: I was told that I’m going to travel to Morocco along with Adriana in less than a month. Still find it hard to believe; extremely grateful for the possibilities that have just opened up in front of me.
Sunday, October 18th
According with Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, nothing is as easy as getting a world from nothingness, when you’ve got imagination. Quite optimistic words that were not proving entirely true while we were trying to figure out our documentary layout; however, after some coffee and with the help of Chronos, we began to weave a one-day plot with aunt Amada as a basis, and the other character’s sporadic appearances as nodes to point out similarities and differences. The next stage was distributing ourselves (nine people) efficiently, so as to shoot what we needed from the five characters, in less than a week and with minimum equipment, i.e. one camera and one boom. If we had thought that the first two weeks had been demanding and time-consuming, we were about to know what the word commitment really means.
Monday, October 19th
Something completely logical in Lewis Carroll o Eugène Ionesco’s pen: a cheque signed in blank, became my ticket to Morocco as well as Adriana’s. The latter, along with other members of the team, went to shoot Hotel Kamarón… an eccentric bachelor who divides his life between paperwork at the family business on one hand, and surrealistic pop art creations with an ad hoc appeal -I’m hungry- as soundtrack, on the other hand.
Tuesday, October 20th
Such a small crew of inexperienced -though enthusiastic young people-, along with the unpredictability inherent in shooting a documentary, makes it hardly impossible to follow a nice and tidy shot list on location. Therefore, while half the team shot Luz Urbana -an urban nomad who argues with the beans, owns a one-eyed dog, sings outside the coffee shops of a fancy neighbourhood, and believes in love- the other half revised Kamarón’s material so as to draw up a shot log. From this very moment, it wasn’t necessary to have clairvoyant skills to foresee that the editing process wouldn’t be a piece of cake. Wednesday and Thursday,
October 21st and 22nd
“What on earth did you tell my mum to convince her to let you record her?” was my uncle Pablo’s first question when I tried to explain the presence of four strangers, a camera and a boom in my aunts’ house. Aunt Amada along with Toya, her inseparable sister, are used to (and love to) receive lots of people in their house; but having a camera behind, in front of, above, below and all around, is something slightly more invasive. Still, against all odds, both ladies were incredibly willing to let us witness their routines, from the market to the kitchen, from the soap operas to an improvised birthday party. I must admit that shooting my own family wasn’t particularly easy at the beginning, but Amada’s little concern about keeping up appearances is contagious, and by the time they were serving the “mole”, tension had disappeared from my shoulders. However, the first day shot’s turnover wasn’t quite encouraging, since less than ten shots were considered useful. Lack of organization and communication, the binomial too many hands and not enough speed, insufficient practice, low level of enterprise and the pressure of knowing that, moment we missed, shot we would never recover, were some of the reasons why we didn’t get results as good as expected. Still, nothing to feel frustrated about, for it’s all part of the learning process; what’s important is to reflect on what went wrong and come up with some remedial work. Thus, feeling more confident and familiarised with both, the location and the people, we managed to get much better shots on the second day. Mission accomplished by eight o’clock: if not plenty, at least sufficient coverage of shots and, more important, two old smiling ladies who had let us spy on the rhythm of their days, the structure of their thoughts and the raw material that makes up their joy, asking us to come back for lunch whenever we want to. The camera didn’t separate us from them; on the contrary, it brought us closer.
Friday, October 23rd
Less than three hours to paint a portrait with light of a character that is anything but simple: a Chilean immigrant who defines herself, firstly, as a mother, then, as an artist that creates mandalas with seeds, and triggers emotions when singing Gracias a la vida. I’m afraid it would be too naïve to think that’s possible to shoot how such a complex person is constructed under those circumstances. Plan B: focus on the original pretext… let’s witness how Margarita Cruz has breakfast. And thus, without the aid of any screenwriter, a great story arises: debts, unplugged telephone and mariachi costumes included. Meanwhile, the other half of the team went to shoot the last character, Rafael Galicia, an old physician that lives with his grand daughter, worries about the water shortage in Mexico City, uses the public transport and eats naturally and comfortably in front of a camera. Saturday,
October 24th
After watching aunt Amada for more than six hours, drawing up a never-ending shot log, faces look pretty tired; and if we dare to wonder how we’ll turn almost twenty hours of material into a 30-minutes documentary in less than a week, tiredness becomes hopelessness. Projection interrupted in order to give Hajar a couple of farewell hugs…time flew and now she is going back to Morocco, where the second part of the workshop is starting to take shape. By ten o’clock we had finished with Kamarón, Luz and the aunt’s videos; shot logs finally neat and clear. But our original structure, with its clear chronological sequence and meeting points, looked more and more like a utopia. Plan B -something rather common in most experimental projects-: make the best out of what you have. Five people had let us shot part of their intimate routines… why should we sacrifice that precious material for the sake of a structure that, in view of the footage, was highly artificial? Instead of forcing wide discrepancies to fit, we decided that the best solution would be making a short movie for each character and let connections appear later; besides, we still need the material from Morocco and The Netherlands in order to put everything together.
Sunday, October 25th
Once the paper edit and the first shot logs were completed -with reel number, timecode and a brief description-, some members of the team started capturing the images from the tape to the computer. Being an indie project, Adriana’s temporary flat -which indeed belongs to Diego, and is located just above Guillermo’s place- became our headquarters, and the selected material was captured in no more than two macbooks strategically located on a ping pong table. By the end of the day, every single shot had been revised by at least three members of the team. My eyes hurt as well as my back, but I must admit I was proud of how smoothly we had worked… not only in terms of getting the shots, but also in terms of getting along with each other. Teamwork always has that extra challenge: dealing with the unique universes contained in each human being. Depending on one’s attitude, the alignment of the stars, destiny or synchronicity (who knows?), having people together for so much time can lead to one of two paths: either infernal conflicts or enriching collaboration. Up to this moment, the latter has been the case. Monday,
October 26th
Adriana managed to stay the entire week; she was planning to go back to Oaxaca on Tuesday in order to get things settled at university before going to Morocco. This was wonderful news due to the fact that she and Omar were called chief editors, while the rest of us were meant to provide them with assistance, advice and useful criticism. Once again Diego and Guillermo -experts in transgressing impossibilities and in challenging logical probabilities for the sake of the project- surprised us with an unexpected announcement: Omar is also travelling to Morocco with Adriana and me, and one of us will travel to Amsterdam as well. Besides, by the end of the week we’ll know who else is going to The Netherlands, either Martín, Mauricio or Allin. The vibe is still positive; however, there’s a slight tension among us, partially due to the competitive dynamic that has arisen again, partially due to working under pressure. By the way, some of us end up living with Adriana… that’s what I call full time schedule.
Tuesday, October 27th
Omar and I worked all night on the aunt’s short movie. Our first cut was pretty good for the first day, but was still highly criticised; fortunately, there’s still one more day to work on it. The latter according to a detailed editing schedule outlined by Diego and Guillermo; there’s no doubt, willingness and organisation can perform miracles, for what looked like complete chaos in the footage, started to take shape in Final Cut Pro files. In the evening we went to a bar called Salón Conde in order to say goodbye to Diego, who’s meeting us in Morocco in two weeks (so fast!). In spite of the awful music and general tiredness -I was finding it hard to keep my eyelids open- we had a nice time. I wouldn’t dare to call us a family -at least not yet- but what’s undeniable is that the bonds that have grown between us are quite strong. And though Omar looked exhausted -even a bit fed up with the editing-, Martín seemed anxious and Adriana missed Oaxaca, I think none of us wanted to be somewhere else. Personally, I love being on my own, but while working on this project, the last thing I crave for is loneliness.
Wednesday, October 28th
Haces un conejo con la mano en la pared (you make a rabbit on the wall with your hand)… I can hardly think of a more out-of-nowhere line for a song, but in Luz Urbana’s style, that’s exactly what you can expect. Editing this material was particularly enjoyable, not only due to the cathartic lyrics (tranquis tranquis = take it easy, take it easy), but because of the window it opens towards this woman’s bizarre way of living. According to a psychoanalytical interpretation, Dionysus speech -i.e. the discourse of madness- is always imbued with truth; thus, even though Luz Urbana’s speech sounds highly neurotic, it’s so real and so raw, that you can’t help paying attention to it. An extra confession: we were all belting out her songs while watching the first cut.
Thursday, October 29th
After sharing days together, Adriana, Omar and Mauricio have become pretty close; they sing, hug each other, jump and laugh whenever they get away from the computer. I can’t say the same of me, due to my inherent coolness (which I do consider an asset); however, this doesn’t mean I feel excluded or isolated… we are different but we respect such differences and we manage to keep on working in a rather positive atmosphere. And when the pretext of work is over, we don’t have to wear masks in front of each other; I think we’ve developed a certain degree of intuition concerning each other’s feelings or thoughts… I’m sure this will be extremely useful when we share house in Morocco. Today we finished the rough cut of all the characters and we celebrated with an ice cream. Sincerely, this is the best production team I’ve ever worked with.
Friday, October 30th
Final revision of the five short movies and, apart from minor details, they are finished. An awaited announcement is made: Mauricio is the one who travels to Amsterdam in January… his personal mission before then, is improving his English and keeping in touch with those going to Morocco. After (trying to) cleaning the flat -I swear I did my best but I’m just bad at housework- and solving some technical problems with the files, we finally reached the end of the workshop in Mexico. It will be strange to go back to our routines after such an intense trip… but this was just the beginning; life –just as with each and every human being- has much more in store for us. Human beings, according to Georges Bataille, are defined by excess, superabundant energy, unnecessary waste and unproductive expenditure. In the -myopic- eyes of a bourgeois society, this Dionysian drive belongs to an accursed share; nevertheless, within a sensitive soul, it is what allows all the creative processes to exist. We have such an enormous amount of energy, we are such a huge excess of the universe, that we can devote our lives to weave illusions, to develop fantasies within fantasies or to explore other dimensions of what’s already given in this endless, spinning tale that we call life.
