Rebellion is like sex; When you reach a certain age, the practice becomes difficult, your kidneys begin to hurt and your legs tremble with need. It’s when we become conservative and start to smell like canned sardines. I don’t know if I explain myself, but these are things that come to mind after having seen I am rebellious, the documentary film by my admired Paloma Concejero.
When Jeanette turned rebellion into an anthem with the help of Manuel Alejandro, I was still a micurria in shorts who threw stones at cats and danced to the ye-yes groups every time they came on TV: Los Mitos, Los Pasos , Modules, Los Angeles… in short, that whole gang of modern groups that emulated the Beatles and whose songs I shook on the eskay couch like an epileptic. We are talking about shabby Spain, in black and white, where people masturbated with rosary beads turned into ejaculations drowned out by repression. Agggggh!
Because the sexual repression of the time was one of the identifying marks of the rancid Franco regime that seemed to have no end. Outside, on the other side of the Pyrenees, things were different. Free love was practiced, and the Beatles and the Stones provided a soundtrack to a youth that, carried away by the cramp of rebellion, took to the streets in Paris and beyond: Mexico, California, the hippies, LSD; a new world that flourished and here without smelling the smoke. This is where Jeanette arrived with her girlish voice and her delicacy when it came to interpreting. And we all fell in love with it.
From this ceremony, taking Jeanette as the guiding thread, Paloma Concejero strung together the pearls of a necklace of music and memories, a jewel where the rhythm of the montage is the essence of a fire that erupts in each frame. It features animations by Álvaro Ortega that are a success with a nod to Saul Bass included in the credits. But I don’t want to reveal the surprises that this documentary holds, because I am going to ask you to see it; especially those people who have grown up listening to a woman who recreated the world that grew inside her, also showing us her fragility, that of her voice and that of the world; yours, ours and Paloma Concejero’s; a woman who was born in the wrong country and was born here, in this land that is so difficult and has such rude grammar towards art.
Paloma has done an enormous job, for years, working on the piece with humility, overcoming tripping, gargajos, envy and silences. All together. She is a rebel, and so am I; That’s why I like everything she does, and in the case of her latest documentary, I can sit for more than two hours, without moving from my seat, without my damn prostate screaming at me to get up and baptize the latrine. It rejuvenates me and takes away the smell of canned sardines. I don’t know if I explain myself.
#Revolts #questions #songs
