Dominique Cassuto de Bonet and her husband Salvador used to work in the advertising and documentary field but always with a view to using their experience to move into more adventurous work. Then, one day, tired and disconsolate, they just upped and went into the interior of Venezuela in a jeep with a very vague promise of production if they could come up with something substantial … They came upon, by complete chance, the desolate and remote village of San Francisco de Tiznados. It looked like sometime out of the past; the place must have been an important center; for among the mud huts stood the ruins of an impressive church – a defiant Don Quixote against the windmills of time.
They went back to civilization, still haunted by the images of people they encountered, premature ghosts of themselves about to be wiped out by progress, which demanded that a dam be built on the foundations of the amalgam of dust and mud which they laughingly called their houses. The young couple paused to think for only a few hours, then decided to take on fully the responsibilities thrust on them by the experience and returned to the village for three and a half years making a film – if it turned out that way-.
What developed was an extraordinary, unpredictable experience that is carefully documented in the film with the enthusiastic collaboration of the villagers. The directors are adamant to point out that it is not a documentary and that the form of the film is the natural growth of an experience that lasted for years. In the face of a disappearing world the hopes and the will to survive of a community are too strong to be beaten. A film very much like a dream where feelings and sombre atmospheres meet. Effortlessly fascinating.
Donald Ranvaud
