Winner of the Goya in 2009 for ‘Camino’ and the Gaudí de Honor in 2021, actress Carme Elías revealed a few weeks ago that she suffers from Alzheimer’s. Now it has been revealed that the actress is playing the most difficult role of her life, being a generous testimony of how Alzheimer’s progressively takes over the mind until it is left without memories.
She has been working on this film for two years, entitled ‘Aquí, ahora’, a joint creation between director Claudia Pinto, a friend of Carme, who directed her in ‘La distancia más larga’ and in ‘Las consecuencias’, a film that won an award at the Malaga Festival. In the film, currently being shot, art and creation become that beacon that illuminates us in the darkest moments.
‘Here, Now’ is a generous, brave, vitalist testimony, without solemnity, which does not pretend to teach about the disease, but to accompany an actress who faces the loss of her consciousness with overwhelming lucidity. “My last conscious journey,” as Carme herself calls it. That ‘Here, Now’ that the actors pursue is the premise that weaves together this pact of love and friendship, of cinema and interpretation. A creative journey towards uncertainty. A leap into the void without a net that becomes a powerful invitation to live in the present.
«Carme didn’t want to share what was happening to her with anyone, so ‘Here, Now’ emerged as a secret film, without really knowing why or for whom. We simply needed to hold on to something, to have a common goal that would give us the strength to catch what was slipping away from us and leave a trail doing what we know how to do: record and let ourselves be recorded, steal the soul and let ourselves be stolen,» explains Claudia Pinto. «Without knowing it, we have been recording images of this film in an almost premonitory way for more than ten years. In my first film, ‘The Longest Distance’, we narrated the journey of a woman who, condemned by an illness, closed all the circles of her life and bravely exercised her freedom until the end. Years later, while filming our second film together, ‘The Consequences,’ we realized that something was happening to Carme. While the camera was recording non-stop, waiting for that good shot that never came, Carme felt panic for the first time at the certainty of her illness.»
Claudia Pinto reveals that “we have accompanied her in the privacy of her home, but also behind the scenes at the presentation of her Gaudí de Honor last year, at the premiere of Las consecuencias at the Malaga Festival and recently at the Brain Film Fest, when she made public her illness. What was really happening to her while the flashes captured her image as an actress? We also prepared, together with her great friend and theatre director, Juan Carlos Corazza, a beautiful and moving exercise of improvisation behind closed doors at the Teatre Akademia, in which Carme revives texts of characters that remain intact in her memory. It is worth asking: when does one stop being an actress? Carme has dedicated her life to an art from which she does not want to say goodbye and now she shares her intimacy and her creativity through this film.”
Elías has spent 50 years building fiction from theatre, film and television; 50 years going back and forth between herself. But now her memory is going away, and emptiness is definitely approaching her reality. «And now, with overwhelming lucidity, she makes us witnesses of her last conscious journey in a film without cuts or action. A theatre director who accompanies her in her last exercise on stage, a film director who refuses to let her go, and she herself eager to leave a trace. ‘Here, now’ is a pact of love and friendship, a shared creative process with an open heart. A powerful invitation to live in the present», explain the producers, while Claudia Pinto concludes: «It is the most difficult film we have ever made. This time we do not have the protection of fiction. Carme does not play a character, nor is there an ‘action!’ or a ‘cut!’ that separates us from reality. The making of the film is part of the film itself and, like Carme, we live it in the most absolute present. We share without shame the doubts, successes and failures of an open-hearted creative process.
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