Programme

Master class by Juan Carlos Rulfo. Uses and forms of language. Memory, time, and origins

The Mexican director and screenwriter Juan Carlos Rulfo will converse with the Chilean director Cecilia Barriga on their particular ways of seeing and making film.

My work has been defined by an admiration for the uses and forms of language, memory, time and origins or personal roots.

I think creative work cannot be done without first examining where we are and what it is that has happened for us to be who we are. A very enjoyable and universal subject matter as well.

From the beginning, I worked on video and film as a means of semi-documentary exploration, by interviewing elderly people for the purpose of exploring the forms of memory, a fundamental theme. In this way, I made my first films El abuelo Cheno y otras historias and Del olvido al no me acuerdo. I worked with oral testimony and history on both of them. Closeness with each character and their relationship with nature help in having a very unique film experience; a kind of fiction about real life.

Up to now, film and motion pictures have given me the opportunity to dream about ancestors and to imagine how things might have been before. Film is time and space, and memory is a perfect, evocative morsel for this medium; we can imagine a story outside of time and in another space, where what matters is not the likelihood of things, but rather the way they are told.

I like walking where no one looks. But there are times when I do not how to look because I do not know how to see. One needs time to get used to it. I also like going unnoticed. I do not want to be seen when I am there, and I want to go unnoticed in order to see better.

My country interests me. For the time being, everything I want to do is there. I am interested in finding new narrative forms in order to work on Mexican issues. I believe in justice and I have a lot of faith in the future. For this reason, my work seeks to give tribute to the manifestations of the spirit, of time and nature, because they are permanent.

Juan Carlos Rulfo

After the master class, there will be screenings of the documentaries El abuelo Cheno y otras historias and Del olvido al no me acuerdo.

Casa de América. Sala Iberia
Tuesday the 8th, 19:30 h.