“Central apartment, well connected, two bedrooms, paranormal phenomena.” What may well seem like the premise of a short fiction film is actually the core plot of the lives of many Spanish families. However, accustomed to being relegated to the background, this reality stars in the short film Centralthe fifth from director Luis Martínez.
“This is a story of ghosts that claim their place in the urban space,” explains Martínez. “A story that reflects on the fact that the terrors that frighten us the most are not so much those that have to do with the supernatural and the esoteric, but rather those day-to-day terrors.”
Co-written with Cristina Medina and based on the story Central, two rooms, paranormal phenomena that the Sevillian novelist Isaac Rosa published in this same newspaper in 2019, Luis Martínez presents a work set in Madrid that tries to “bring the viewer closer to social aspects that affect us all.” It does so by addressing current issues such as the problem of housing and tourism in cities.
María Vázquez, who has stood out in films such as Matriaand Víctor Duplá, who has done the same in the series Tell me how it happenedlead the cast of actors and actresses of the project, which also includes Álex Crivián, Violeta Pérez, Javier Tena and India Delgado.
The entire short film is surrounded by a very intelligent atmosphere of terror, where the music and the scared look of its protagonists manage to convey that something is going worse than it seems. The Madrid urbanization, which shows so much charm towards tourists, hides inside its homes the consequences that this tourism produces for those who live there. Luis Martínez intends to address the matter in Centraldenouncing how living spaces have ended up transformed into commercial and consumer spaces.
In fact, that was Isaac Rosa’s intention when he wrote the story on which the short film is based. “Something that I always propose when I write literature, and that is achieved with fiction, is to show the strangeness of the everyday. Stop seeing as normal what is not normal and ask ourselves questions again, as happens in this case with the issue of housing,” the writer explains to elDiario.es.
“When Luis told me that he saw a short story in that story, I also saw it clearly. I was looking for precisely what the story tries to do: use a series of resources such as suspense to end up talking about housing,” says the writer. Luis Martínez, for his part, confesses that what impressed him most about the story is “its ability to relate this elusive logic of our reality that seems impossible to be narrated.” “[Isaac Rosa] “It has that rare virtue of surprising you, which is increasingly difficult in a world as hypertrophied with stimuli as the one we live in now,” declares the director.
Horror as a key genre
Using the effective alternation of happiness that emblematic places or amusement parks produce in tourists, and the fear that remains hidden as a result of their visits, Central It reflects how urban space has little to do with the city as a historical idea of inhabiting and sharing space in a community. To do this, Luis Martínez makes use of social horror, which, along with humor, he considers to be “the two most appropriate genres to approach complex realities and offer the viewer a basis for observation, a model for interpreting the creation they are seeing. ”.
“We wanted viewers to travel on the back of terror, stumbling across flashes of black comedy. Beneath the scares, the shock and the fear of the characters, there is that significant subtext that builds an allegory of what scares us the most, using ghosts and supernatural elements to represent real-life horrors that are even more terrifying,” explains Martínez. “Our terror is not fantastic terror, but everyday terror.”
Isaac Rosa agrees that “terror is not only used to scare people.” “In addition to generating concern in the audience or giving them nightmares, it often serves to introduce other topics. Terror has historically been used to show social fears, the concerns of a given moment in a different way,” explains the author of the original story.
Our terror is not fantastic, but everyday terror.
Luis Martinez
— Filmmaker
In this way, Central uses the genre to criticize problems such as touristification. “It is something that was happening before the pandemic, but, as has happened with other social phenomena in recent years, it has accelerated after it,” says Isaac Rosa. “You walk through the center of Madrid today and it gives the feeling of being in a kind of large shopping center. In the end, those who are paying for it are the neighbors.”
The family in this story, who is on tourism in the capital, goes so far as to say that they do not want anything to do with large companies, which are “the ones that are really destroying the cities.” Luis Martínez points out that “we tend to think that, out of our good will, we are not contributing to certain dynamics that are harmful to the lives of the people around us.” “Sometimes we think that if we buy a plastic bottle and then recycle it, nothing happens. Perhaps the reflection that one has to make is that perhaps it is better not to buy the plastic bottle and ask for a glass of water,” exemplifies the director.
Housing, an essential issue
Regarding the housing crisis, another fundamental aspect in the work, Luis Martínez emphasizes that it represents “the taking away of our dignity by converting an issue that is directly related to our needs, such as housing, into a commodity.” Although the story was published in 2019, the complaint it makes is more current than ever, which is key in its adaptation to the big screen. “It seems to me that we have the obligation to reflect on the reality in which we occupy space,” says Luis Martínez. “But I prefer to live in a world without the housing problem than with a problem that I can portray in the cinema,” he continues.
Furthermore, the filmmaker reveals an urbanization more interested in profitability than in being a habitable place, hence the importance Central gives the figure of the bear, an emblematic symbol of Madrid whose appearances are constant throughout the short film. He is a key figure in history.
Having a ghost in your home is not the worst thing that can happen to you. It is much worse not to have a house to have a ghost
Isaac Rosa
— Novelist
“The bear, as well as other dolls that one can find around the city, have the function of generating light and seduction for the visitor. But there is one of the great dark reversals, because as anyone can imagine, within those bears there is not a middle-class Caucasian working,” Martínez clarifies. “The bear represents how cities are designed so that we see the shine on the surface of things without reflecting on what lives on the other side.”
Although Isaac Rosa does not feel that art should always invite reflection, the writer recognizes that “literature allows you to look from certain corners or margins, to look strangely, to look in a different way.” Luis Martínez points in the same direction, who would like the viewer to finish the short thinking that “everyday fears and terrors are usually much worse than those we see in a movie theater.” “Having a ghost in your home is not the worst thing that can happen to you. It is much worse not to have a house to have a ghost in,” says the director.
Central will compete for the Goya nomination after being awarded the Brigadoon Award for best short film in Sitges, thus being the only Spanish work awarded in the last edition. Meanwhile, viewers will be able to see it through Filmin, where it premiered on November 22. Your greatest victory will be to give visibility to ghosts that deserve to stop being ignored.
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