Lejos de los árboles

Architect, painter, writer and hunter, Jacinto Esteva was much more than just a filmmaker [...]. Esteva first got behind the camera with a background in painting and architecture. After filmmaking and tired of forcing viewers to watch his images, he would return to his pencils and brushes [...].

His films shot during the first half of the sixties are the documentaries: Notes sur l'émigration. Espagne 1960, Autour des salines and Lejos de los árboles. His poetic period, beginning in 1966 with ties to the Barcelona School, includes Dante no es únicamente severo, Después del diluvio, Metamorfosis and El hijo de María. In 1971 when he shot what would be his last fiction feature film, Esteva had already discovered that the African continent was a space of infinite freedom. There he rediscovered ancestral rites, the cult of death and the brutality exerted against animals and the people he had already filmed in the dark Spain of Lejos de los árboles. The result is chaotic and partly-missing footage that was meant for two unfinished projects and that nobody has managed to edit together [...].

Esteve Riambau