A Tiznao Films Production.
Produced by Fernando Arias and Gualdino Ferreira. Written and directed by Dominique Cassuto de Bonet & Salvador Bonet. Features entire cast. Camera (color), Salvador Bonet; edited by Dominique Cassuto de Bonet ; sound, Alfredo Oronos; music, Miguel Angel Fuster. Reviewed at the Delphi Cinema, Berlin, Feb. 2,4, 1984. Running time: se MISS. With Mar Maria Bellisario, Domingo Antonio Lovera, Francisca Hernandez, Pablo Alejo, Candida Tovar de Macero, Juan Jose Yard, Abillo Antonio Molina, Natividad Belisario, Natividad Graterol, David Lares Gualdino Ferreira da Silva, people of the village San Francisco de Tiznados.
This painstaking document, put together by a husband and wife team who invested over three years in its preparation, is right up the alley of the spirit prevalent in this year’s edition of Young Cinema Forum. It is effective both as an ethnographic document of a dying society and as an additional image of Latin America and its specific problems. The Bonets lived three years in a small village, San Francisco de Tiznado, a place twice doomed and now nonexistent. Already on their arrival, most of the population was on its way out, looking for better places to make a living and create a future. The second and final condemnation Is the government’s decision to build a dam, which may well profit the economy of the entire country, but will leave San Francisco de Tiznado deep under water.
The film proclaims its theme from the first shot, as it records the exodus of the last villagers who had stuck there to the end, under a heavy, pitiless sun, towards their new place, a slum for which they will have to pay out of their own meagre resources. Then it goes back to record the creeping despair of a simple and surprisingly cheerful congregation, slowly shrinking as day after day more people are defeated by the economic conditions in the village, and prefer to join family or relatives in more prosperous surroundings. Nostalgia for the past combines with present day frustration as the rural community disintegrates. Already only old people and a child, through whose eyes the story is told are still living there, churches fall into disrepair, the houses are crumbling. Still, there is a certain charm in this place and its people which the film transmits nicely, whether by carefully listening to old stories, following the village drunk, or via the backward representative of the law. As it goes on, the expropriation system, whereby the evacuees are offered pennies for their present dwellings and obliged to move to another place, whether they like it or not, is shown in subdued, but very critical tones. The prefect who assures everybody they had been offered fair prices for their homes, but doesn’t like it when he is given a similar amount for his, the paradoxical situation that old people — they are the only ones left — have to start their life anew when they lack the energy to do so, all in clearly stated, and indeed one of the evicted old ladies prefers to die in her own bed, even if nothing is stated that plainly.
Using the villagers to play their own story, the Bonets opted for a technique that would take into account the presence of the filming crew, for it is evident that the participants are aware of the camera and tend quite often to play to but by explaining there is a film being made about the village, it justifies their attitude. At one point, the eight-year old girl who is the main protagonist approaches the jeep of the crew to ask them whether, as filmmakers, they couldn’t do anything to stop the downward process. Camera work is daring at times, some scenes played in almost complete darkness, letting the voices of the persons take over, numerous closeups affectionately record the deep-wrinkled, weather-beaten faces, and allow some characters a margin of comic relief, welcome in this sort of subject. Traditions are carefully preserved in the way these people address each other and music intrudes only when absolutely necessary. Certainly limited by its subject matter, its slow, deliberate tempo and the particular technique chosen, to a specialized audience, this item nevertheless stands a good chance at playing at many other festivals later this year, and some already intend to book it.
Edna.
