18/03/2021 - The Spanish director has presented her second film at the Punto de Vista Festival a few days prior to its release in mainstream movie theatres in her home country

(© Matteo Rovella)

Three years ago, Marina Lameiro participated in the official competition section of the Punto de Vista Film Festival with her feature debut, Young & Beautiful [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. She is now taking part in this year’s edition by opening the Pamplona-based international documentary film festival with Dardara [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marina Lameiro
film profile], just before its release in mainstream theatres in Spain, over the course of today and tomorrow, courtesy of Atera Films. We had a chat with her to get the low-down on a few aspects of her sophomore feature.

Cineuropa: At first glance, your two films don’t seem very much alike…
Marina Lameiro: You're right, but some people do see overlaps in them because they share a certain way of looking at things. But yes, this one is different, as the first one depicted my closest surroundings: people I knew extremely well, very intimate subjects, people with no social relevance. It’s nothing like Dardara, which centres on a music group (Berri Txarrak) that creates this huge buzz, and on their fans.

What criteria did you follow when selecting the songs that we hear during the film?
The musical compositions are just another narrative element in the film, and that’s why they were chosen meticulously. I wanted the lyrics to bring something to what the movie recounts – both the emotion of the music and what it means to break up the band or give up at a crucial moment for the group. I had a list of songs drawn up previously, and during the live shows, I kept an eye open for the ones that we had managed to capture useful images for, because you could have a great song but not get any images of people really being into it. When the two things coincided, I started working with that subject, using different scenes and trying out different things, but nothing was left to chance. Everything was chosen so as to make the film move forward on a narrative level.

How many days did you spend clinging to the band, and in how many cities?
It was 23 concerts in all: there were three in Tokyo and two in Pamplona. In Germany, I visited Berlin and Hamburg. We also went to the USA, Mexico and France. Then there were national festivals: Tsunami Xixón and Resurrection Fest (Viveiro, Lugo). And we also went to concert halls like the WiZink Center in Madrid and the Apolo in Barcelona. The rest were concerts dotted around the Basque Country.

So how many shooting days did you have accompanying the group?
It was these concert days that I mentioned and then ten additional ones, so 33 days in total. I also spent many days with the fans: eight or ten days with those abroad, and seven or eight with the Spanish ones.

In some concert footage that we are used to seeing, the camera seems to have a whale of a time showing the crowds or the cavernous spaces, but you opted to capture the sheer thrill of the close-up. How did you manage to get to that point, so close to people’s faces, holding the camera and surrounded by those throngs?
With a small camera, which is less intimidating, because people think you’re taking photos and they don’t mind as much, even though I had a telephoto lens. I set about filming, and afterwards, I would ask the audience if they wanted to appear in the film. I was scared that someone might say they didn’t want to, but on the contrary, everyone was thrilled about appearing… And that made me very happy.

Watching those concerts packed full of people continues to rouse some strange emotions, now that they can’t take place under the same conditions…
It was something I wasn’t expecting when we were shooting the film, and nor did I foresee it while I was editing, during the lockdown and the easing, because I didn’t think that the pandemic would go on for such a long time. I imagined that when the movie came out, everything would have gone back to how it was before. And yes, this takes on another dimension at the moment, when you see so many people in one place, crowded together. At that time, it didn’t make me giddy, but it does now, when I wonder when things will go back to how they were.

Diana Toucedo (Thirty Souls [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Diana Toucedo
film profile]) was once again in charge of the editing on a film of yours, after she also did so on your debut. Are you already an artistic duo?
It’s a pleasure working with her: she really understands what I’m trying to do, and sometimes she even gets ahead of me. In my previous movie, I worked a lot on the edit, and it reached a point where I could see it wasn’t moving forward and where it needed an extra pair of eyes. Diana came on board, and suddenly, everything took on a new dimension thanks to her fresh way of thinking.

There’s a poster in the film that we glimpse in Tokyo, which says: “No music, no life”. Would we be unable to live without music?
That’s exactly it. The film gradually evolved as the shoot went on, but at the beginning, when they suggested it to me and I started to write, that was the starting point: music truly helps us live.

(Translated from Spanish)