A trip in memory of his relatives was what led the filmmaker Pablo Casanueva (Ribeseya1995) to create Moona 76-minute film that will have its world premiere in the section Withdrawals of the Xixón International Film Festival (FICX). A careful image, behind which hides a long work of historical research, gives Moon -which bears the name of Casanueva’s family name) the cover of an authentic documentary film through which the story of a past broken by repression and exile is recovered.
The author talks to us about this process that, for the first time, sees the light as it premieres exclusively in NORTH from the trailer Moon.
Moon It comes from a first memory: he recounts, naturally and with distance but also with dignity, the execution of his great uncle Ramón. How does a curtia edá guah.e live this intergenerational transmission? How do you mark Pablo Casanueva d’anguaño?
It is shocking, very shocking, to be told that a relative of yours, no matter how old or even if you never knew him, was murdered. For me, what made me wonder: Why would they shoot him? What were the reasons? What did I answer? Where was he? How was it? And, in some way, it was a trigger for the year later to reconnect with that testimony that my mother told me, to do a more in-depth investigation and to be able to answer those questions that I had already had as a child. It marked me directly in these last three years because of this vital moment that it was to make the film, but it was also as a percument more than the vital political functioning. In my house, politics was always present; the critical vision of reality, in some way. This event accentuated a connection with the past, with family members who also had that political position, or so I seemed to think. And later I verified that yes, that was true, that they also had a critical view of the world in which they lived.
The first step of the investigation, perhaps when you were still not even aware of doing it, was to approach the Luna’s likenesses, who were also shown in the film…
Yes, it’s true. I was not aware that what I was doing could become a film until well into the research process. And the semeyes opened, after this oral testimony of Ramón’s execution, the entrance door. Thanks to them I began to put faces to some of the characters and, above all, to try to find identities that I never knew. There were many semeyes in the file that my grandmother and my mother kept that I didn’t know who they belonged to, but they had entries in that album that showed that they were important. That at some moments in family life they had been people you loved or who starred in key moments in your life story. The investigation continued to try to identify these people. On the other hand, the physical analysis of backs, uses, markings, image formats… an analysis based on artistic information methodologies allowed me to arrive at another type of data. But always starting from this family album.
Fales, in the presentation of the film, of the xenétic family line that connected you with those semeyes. Do you think it will be possible for us viewers to also feel that connection?
Yes, I believe that the connection can occur in the viewer as well, because I tell the story through a research process; It is, then, a discovery that accompanies me and, in some way, I do not go ahead of the viewer when it comes to understanding the journey of my relatives, but rather I start alongside them when telling the story. history of the Moon. I also tried to create a certain emotional distance to facilitate that empathy. If the story is, perhaps, too intimate… there are moments when it is, but in the thick of it, it seems to me, I wanted to be distant to facilitate the understanding of his lives. That is not an excessively self-referential portrait.
Then the investigation continued in the archives, the discovery of other clues that the family memory erased, or never wanted to tell, or never knew.
Yes. First it was some documentary archive that we had at home, very little, and with little political influence. The bulk of the political documentation was what I found in the Municipal Archive of Ribeseya and later in the Provincial Archive of Asturies, in the Militar del Ferrol, in Salamanca, in several departments of France…
Did what you found change, in any way, your perception of the family history that until then was transmitted only orally?
Yes, it was an important change. There I found the political positioning of these people; It was evident that the facts were not based on arbitrary things, on banalities or on the chaos of war; In this speech of the “fight between brothers.” No, these people were affiliated with parties, unions, and defended the legal government of the Republic. They have a clear critical view of reality. And it was hard, very hard, because the documents, 80% of them – all of them, except those from France – were documents made by the regime, by the dictatorship; very harsh pores, with many criticisms and this unified discourse for all those accused and accused. Without specific attention to each case; He gave the same words to all the accusations. It was tough, but also, in some ways, some of it was comforting. For example, in Ribeseya’s archives my great-grandmother, María Luna, appears as a “Marxist axitadora.” I was excited [rises] And it varied, it varied. All of this gave me a clue to where they were located: the concentration camps, the front, places of refuge, of exile; places of work and life. I was able to know all that thanks to the archives.
When we talk about life stories, especially when we talk about those that involve war and suffering, many people choose not to talk about a certain sense of honor. Was it your case?
Yes. I asked myself, more than to tell the suffering of my grandmother, my great-grandmother or my brothers, because of whether this small family story, which is now enormous, deserved special treatment, like a movie. . And I considered yes, because all stories are part of History and deserve to be told, maintained, recovered. It was what I did with the history of the Luna, because I realized, too, that I was the person who had the historical responsibility of doing it, of recovering a history consigned, otherwise, to almost certain oblivion. But I do imagine my granddaughter and my great-grandmother with a lot of modesty if they were seen on a movie screen, they were portrayed so precisely and in moments that meant a lot of pain, a lot of suffering for them. However, I also believe that due to social, cultural, political change – I would give the step of modesty so that they would have arguments to be part of it. I would understand their modesty, due to the silence they were forced to have in the dictatorship and subsequent democracy, but I trust that, in the future, these stories will no longer be ones of silent suffering, but rather of public argument.
And always from their eyes. From Chabela, from María…
Nowadays, self-referential, intimate cinema, from one’s own analysis or from a close family environment, is very common. This is because cinema increasingly allows this structure, without large productions; It allows us to approach this type of stories in a more reliable way with the materials and with the entire filming and editing process. However, I didn’t want it to get too close to that format, because I didn’t want to take too much prominence in the film. The protagonists are my grandmother, Chabela, and her sister, María Luna. Elles. I wanted to distance myself, to be just the driving force that accompanies the viewer in the process of investigation and journey, of road movie through the spaces of memory. My sensations, my life, can be shown in some of those moments subtly, or very obviously with voice in voice. offbut always with that distant positioning. A positioning that is not excessively personal. There are exceptions, yes: for example, the moment in which I appear in the Algerian saber, reading historical texts. There, my presence is very evident, in the middle of the plan, because I am not ashamed to read texts from a collective perspective. But when I talk about the intimate, the familiar, my presence is more reserved. Closer to the camera.
Memory, justice and reparation: these are the three fundamental pillars of the memorial movement. Do you think that with Moon Is it time to combine the three, today, when the scarcity is the main risk in the maintenance of democratic Memory?
Physical memory. The film, and the process, are an exercise in memory. That I was long, three years old; interminent, non-practical, constant non-mental. It made me visit many places and approach them with jinxes, as they say in the field of feminism, violets: jinxed cabbages of memory, and yes, cabbages of feminism, too. Your Excellency, I think so too. Justice was achieved by analyzing the processes of the Luna from a fair, supportive prism and trying to seek reality without the detours that the regime put in place. Repair? No, I don’t believe that anymore. The reparation… my güela, my bisgüela died feeling guilty, especially my bisgüela. Feeling guilty for taking a political part and that that would mean jail time or exile for one brother, the execution of another… Not because of her own positions, well, but she would help make all of that happen. And my grandmother, I suppose, would also inherit that guilt. Poro, the repair arrived late… or not at all. I don’t know if it happened at any time. Nun arrived. My reparation? Bonus: I believe that I do not deserve any reparation. Maybe just one, small one, which is most related to justice: being able to know the history of my family. Nesi casu yes, yes we can say that I made it. That I can know the why, the answer, who is this uncle of mine that they told me, when I was a child, that he was shot. That is reparation.
#trust #future #stories #world #Memory #longer #silent #suffering #public #argument #Nortes #Focused #periphery
