Fragile Legacy: A Chronicle of the Retueyos Section at FICX 2024
Memory is like a temple threatened by ruin. Letters, faces and even personal objects that make up its inventory risk being buried under a world increasingly driven by consumerism dynamics. This perspective of legacy as a fragile structure facing oblivion has found its expression in the films screened in the Retueyos section of the Gijón International Film Festival (FICX). Algo viejo, algo nuevo, algo prestado by Hernán Rosselli, Yo vi tres luces negras by Santiago Lozano, and Luna by Pablo Casanueva, share a common goal: to preserve heritage. What matters is that memory endures, that the narrative persists, and that traces remain, be it through frames and outlines, like a printed photo on a dining room cabinet, or more elusive presences, such as the still silhouette of a ghost by the riverbank. Despite their differences, these three films are rooted in a complex interplay between construction and truth, between what we narrate and what we strive to save. Moreover, their directors rely on gestures, gazes, and off-screen space as powerful tools to tell stories about who we once were.
Among the three entries, Algo viejo, algo nuevo, algo prestado is the most sophisticated and perhaps, for this reason, the most confusing in addressing the past, reclaiming memory, and preserving its archives. Hernán Rosselli – who in Gijón received his second FIPRESCI Prize, following his win for Mauro (2014) at BAFICI – ingeniously crafts an elaborate simulation about family and home, seamlessly disguising each of its artifices. The key lies in donning a mask inspired by home movies to create a twisted, baroque fiction layered with multiple dimensions. On one hand, it is a crime thriller reminiscent of epic chronicles by renowned authors like Ricardo Ragendorfer and Osvaldo Soriano. On the other, it unfolds as a long sequence of VHS-textured fragments filmed in the late 1980s and 1990s during the Alfonsín and Menem eras in Argentina. The most remarkable aspect of this dialogue between cinema and video, the fictional and the domestic, the explained and the invoked, is that the protagonists remain the same across both formats. The result is pure intrigue – resilient as steel.
This arises from sheer serendipity: Rosselli had privileged access to a trove of home recordings – captured over 15 years – featuring a father (Hugo Felpeto), a mother (Alejandra Cánepa), and their daughter (Maribel Felpeto). The most fascinating element of this extensive material—which would delight Richard Linklater—is the way the footage is filmed, the enigmatic air it conveys as the camera lingers on a newlywed woman’s gaze and her timid gestures during a period when Argentina was supposedly embracing democracy. These moments of life and custom, imbued with mystery, inspired Rosselli to write, direct, and edit this dazzling film, a colossal montage underscored by an electro version of Bach. By deftly manipulating borrowed footage, Rosselli transcends the archetypes he invokes. The father, a shadowy patriarchal figure whose absence is felt, drives the intrigue, while the mother steps into his shoes, leading a clandestine group of lottery runners. Inspired by Rosselli’s childhood memories, they operate illegal gambling activities in monitored apartments in southern Buenos Aires. Finally, Maribel, an Argentine version of Michael Corleone, represents both hope and suspicion, as her father’s secret life looms large. Her lucid voiceover accompanies the archival fragments like diary footnotes, evoking confessions.
While the range of styles is generous, Rosselli’s meticulousness occasionally gets the best of him. Even so, the tension builds with steady resolve in this carefully crafted stylistic exercise, always retaining its underlying significance. This is not merely a tale of mafia wars and police corruption but a portrait of vulnerability in a future clouded by uncertainty, where crisis and inflation lurk at the edges. Rosselli proves himself as a shrewd storyteller, a master of deception constructing a mystery in the present without losing sight of the past. Photographs, videos, and surveillance footage imbue the narration with a testimonial quality that is never omniscient but is instead layered, fragmenting the image of a family living in a home with an expiration date. Thus, the past lives of Alejandra and Maribel permeate the narrative through noir codes and the almost erotic influence of iconic works like The Godfather Part II (1974) and Goodfellas (1990). The difference from this American legacy is Rosselli’s restraint, stripping the genre of its more ostentatious attributes, omitting explicit violence, and relegating it to the background, reducing it all to a fragile legacy, to a forgotten family photo in the dining room just before the police burst in.
When Jungle Bleeds
With Santiago Lozano’s Yo vi tres luces negras, we are transported from the Buenos Aires criminal underworld to a mystically infused territory where memory’s fragility also permeates the fictional framework. Unlike Rosselli, Lozano adopts a much clearer, slower-paced approach, focusing on the mysteries of the wide shot rather than the intricate feats of complex editing. For this, we delve into Colombia’s Pacific region, more specifically, the Chocó jungle in the west of the country. The tragedy of the communities inhabiting this region – thoroughly investigated by the director – lies in their struggle to survive on their own land, threatened by paramilitary guerrillas and the mafia’s mining exploitation. However, the criminal genre is again pushed to the margins. The focus here is the telluric dimension of the story, the spirits that inhabit the rivers, and the death foretold by the animals. This way of seeing and interpreting the habitat defines the perspective of José, an Afro-Colombian healer – portrayed with remarkable authenticity by debut actor Jesús María Mina – who is visited by the ghost of his murdered son, a trauma Lozano had already explored in his earlier work, Siembra (2015). This revelation sets José on a final mission: to find a place to die and reunite with his loved ones. It’s a journey steeped in symbolism, where humans seem static while animals instinctively move about, as if people were embedded in the tropical landscape and fauna infiltrated José’s story without distorting the slow, dense, and melancholic rhythm of the mise-en-scène.
At times, Lozano employs techniques reminiscent of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema, the way ghostly presences interact with a nature rich in wisdom. At others, his style recalls Lisandro Alonso, as when a man morphs into a giant moth via an editing trick and flutters over a table. This atavistic allegory connects Yo vi tres luces negras to the metamorphosis in Eureka (2023), where a young Dakota Sioux woman transforms into a stork through a slow tracking shot. However, the imagery here is so deeply rooted in local culture and tied to the notion of death that almost everything in the narrative points in that direction. From the silhouettes of the disappeared – visible only to José – watching him silently by a river or perched on a mining crane that exhumes human remains, to the image of a tatabro (a rainforest-dwelling creature like a wild boar) navigating a narrow tunnel like a guide. Even the songs, composed by Colombian soloist Nidia Góngora, evoke the Pacific region’s mournful chants, known as alabados, infusing the film with a funerary dimension. This perilous journey of apparitions, epiphanies, and ecocide, addressing belief systems as forms of resistance, feels more like a funeral rite, a family mourning, or a silent lament – not just for the loss of a son but for the traumas of a wounded jungle, a bleeding map.
The Cracks of Ribeseya
Finally, Asturian director Pablo Casanueva could ostensibly close the circle of this three-way dialogue, but framing it as such might not make much sense. Luna, his second solo feature, is a documentary that also delves into the intricacies of memory to safeguard its internal connections. However, this doesn’t mean it’s the perfect conclusion to the discussion. Rather, it opens a path for expansion, allowing for a clearer view of the fragility of legacy and the actions needed to address it. Essentially, Luna is the road movie of an arduous personal investigation. Casanueva directs, edits, and narrates this documentary that testifies to the fractures within his own family’s story. It’s no coincidence that in one pivotal scene, a group of professionals restores the vault of the Church of San Salvador de Moru, located in the town of Ribeseya, which was burned in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Strikingly, it was the flames that created gaps in the vault’s whitewash, revealing the paintings that today a team of restorers strives to protect using various techniques, such as injecting a substance into the vault to stabilize it. This method of preserving heritage and protecting it from ruin could well serve as a metaphor for the film. Casanueva embarks on a journey into the past to restore the memory of his grandmother’s family, bearing the surname Luna, who were persecuted during the Franco regime for their political stance and condemned to separation or death.
On this lengthy journey, Casanueva travels from Asturias to Paris, passing through Galicia, Catalonia, and Brittany, retracing the paths of his family during their exile and visiting the homes, prisons, and even concentration camps where now only absence remains. This leads to haunting moments that prioritize off-screen space—perhaps inspired by Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (1956)—to evoke the tragedy of war and dictatorship victims through an impactful sound design. The film’s pinnacle is a brief interview in a Ribeseya nursing home. An elderly man with a fragile smile, a distant relative of Casanueva, tries to recognize his father – executed in Oviedo and buried in a mass grave – from a black-and-white photo. His confused expression and immediate reaction upon hearing the name Ramon Luna illustrate the film’s deep commitment to history.
Unfortunately, not all elements are of equal quality, and the film doesn’t always find the best methods to express its ideas. At times, it leans toward literalism, with Casanueva verbally stating his conclusions instead of fully exploring the visual potential of his images. Still, the sincerity of his investigation is unquestionable. From a genealogical still-life of portraits filmed overhead on a wooden table to the repetition of shots in the same locations and perspectives as historical photographs, the director of Bernabé (2013) employs various techniques to craft a necessary statement in these times of misinformation. At its core, this stems from a noble obsession: rejecting the homogenized narrative to embrace the inspiring proposals showcased at the FICX’s Retueyos Section.
Carles Martinez Agenjo
Edited by José Teodoro
@FIPRESCI 2024