The director and teacher came to the worldAinhoa Rodriguez in 1982 in Madrid, although his family soon moved to Estremadura, where she grew up as a precocious lover of cinema. For the filming of his debut feature, Brave flash, returned to this territory with the intention of telling a story set in the rural world, starring a handful of neighbors and non-professional actresses, who draws on both documentaries and magical realism and many other sources. The result is a very singular film, of a strange and dazzling poetic, that conquered the public in the Moscow and Roterdam festivals among other international showcases and this Sunday it did the same in Malaga, where it already appears by right as a serious candidate for the Golden Biznaga. Brave flash It will hit commercial theaters on June 18.
-It is not difficult to find in Brave flash references to the cinema of Saura or Buñuel. Was it your intention to take a certain tradition and take it to a very different place?
-First of all, I’ve been a cinephile since I was little. As a child I saw the cinema as the dreams of others and dreamed of telling mine. I have always felt cinema as a necessity, because in some way we are made of cinema, it is what we digest all the time. Of course I am fascinated by the cinema of Saura and Buñuel, like that of Fellini, I could spend hours talking about references because they are either all or none. And not just filmmakers, but also photographers, designers, many different creators. However, this movie has been very special from the beginning given the raw material in front of it. The gift that these women with whom I have worked and their people have given me is ground gold for any author. That is what has stimulated me the most, their generosity: they have put their life, their character, their joy, their sadness, their daily struggles in my hands, and we have worked with that. You have to bear in mind that I am from Extremadura and that I wanted, perhaps for a matter of pride of origin, to make a film with Extremadura. The irony that is so present in the film, that backwardness that sometimes turns into black humor, is something purely Extremadura.
-Did you ever make a regular documentary?
-No, I’m not good for that. I can’t help but reach out. Anyway, since Nanuk the Eskimo we have seen documentaries so intervened, so touched, that often the boundaries between it and fiction are not clear. But no, I have not put on a corset, I have suffered a lot of anxiety when assuming self-production. I wanted to be free, to dispose of all the tools that were within my reach, whether they were fiction, documentaries or magical realism. Afterwards, I have mixed everything in the balance that I have considered the most appropriate. So it has been.
– Could you have made this film as you have done with the input of other producers?
-Not. Absolutely. It is true that Luis Miñarro saw a first version of the montage, fell in love with the project and entered post-production to take part in the process, but, beyond that, asking for the participation of a producer would have been like demanding an act of faith, that Trust blindly in what I wanted to do I have gone to a town to live without knowing when I was going to return, in a completely open process in which I have been doing things my way, the castings, the rehearsals, the locations, the staging, everything has been a continuous feedback that would have blown any producer’s head. On the other hand, I will speak clearly: if I am the author of this film, as is the case, I get involved until I die in whatever it takes to get it done, so that everything economic has been invested in the artistic, with my team behind me all the time. It is a personal bet even the biological.
– Would you say you have invented a new way of shooting?
-I think there is a general tendency to restrict ourselves, to keep us under control, which has to do with the logic of consumption. It seems that there can only be one method of doing things, that if someone gets out of the pot there will be someone who gets nervous. But this logic is the complete opposite of art. There are painters who spend years finishing a painting and others who paint one painting a day. Well, in the same way, there cannot be a single process to make a movie. I don’t think there is a new method, it is that for each film I make I will give the method that I consider convenient.
-What space is left for authorship with platforms?
-I dont know. I claim authorship to the death and I know that does not always go down well. I am concerned that because of the pandemic it has become natural for movies to be viewed on computers and mobiles. Brave flash is a sensory film made to be seen in movie theaters, in freedom, so that the viewer can enter the game and finish the film in their own way. The online use of cinema has become popular with the excuse that we do not have time, but it is our responsibility to claim the time to go to the cinema. You have to go to the mystery of the room, which is a temple. Enough of linksPlease, you have to go to the movies.
“Making movies means, in any case, that you adopt a political position and that you assume an ideology”
– Are you concerned about the response of the public once the film reaches theaters, or do we leave you in a mere curiosity?
-Everything that is happening with the film, the good national and international reception it is having, is already a huge gift. Beyond this, I have not made this film to please anyone, but I do believe that there may be an audience tired of always seeing the same movie and wanting to try different things. What I want is for the public to enter the process, in their own way, in full freedom, with the involvement they want, with joy and courage.
-How has working with a non-professional cast been when building the characters?
-They have given me everything. They put the clay in front of me, I just had to mold it. That said, it has been a very demanding job that has demanded a lot of energy. He had to be with each one of them as long as necessary until the human being emerged, above the insecurities. Then, yes, these women do not hesitate to take your measurements and put you to the test. I accepted this and went through his trials until I gained his trust. From here, everything was much easier.
-You claim other ways of making films, but you also claim Brave flash other ways of being in the world beyond the formulas of success. Is yours a political cinema?
-Yeah right. Making movies implies positioning yourself politically and assuming an ideology. You must never believe those who say that their cinema has nothing to do with politics. If you make a commercial film, with a supposedly neutral accent, with normative faces and banal ideas, all that is politics.
-We already know which filmmaker you are now, but what filmmaker would you like to be in the future?
-Which I am now. What I would like is to have it easier when developing a personal project, to be able to build my own methodology. I would like to have a support, with a production infrastructure that understands and shares what I want to do, because production is also in the end a creative work. I want to continue exploring the paths that interest me. I have several ideas for another feature film. I like to play, the unclassifiable, remove all the clichés. I have no prejudices, of course, nor do I want to have them was what was missing. Making movies is being a girl again. I don’t want to fall asleep, I want to be attentive and not lose passion. Making movies is also hard, it is difficult, but it is worth it. Not because of what I receive now but because of what it entails, because of what I live on set or in the editing room.
-The film has a Malaga connection with Paloma Peñarrubia and Alejandro Lévar, who have composed the music. How was working with them?
– I do not understand the cinema only as a question of image. That is why sound and music had an essential function when it came to pivoting between naturalism, realism, the invention of reality, the absurd and psychedelia. That is why there are root elements in music such as the Extremaduran jota and other different elements such as those that Paloma and Alejandro have contributed with their compositions. It has been fantastic to work with them, even though we had to do everything remotely due to the pandemic.
-When the cinema is no longer a game, will you leave it?
-Then that would not be making movies, but something else. If I had to make a movie without the freedom to make my own decisions, that job would be more like that done in a factory. At the moment, what would be useful in Spain is greater support for auteur cinema, because it is the one that is giving us international prestige. Greater political will directed at the author is required.
