Goya-winning Spanish filmmaker Jose Luis Guerin returned to the competition in 2001 with “Good Valley Story” (Historias del Buen Valle) and “Historias del Buen Valle”). Life and ecological conflicts in this small region, serving as a microcosm of the world.
Guerín says he spoke with variety before his world premiere, showing off his work at the biggest festivals around the world, but he feels that in a film like “Good Valley Stories,” it is right to have a world premiere in his home country. “I think San Sebastian is the best place for his first presentation, as some aspects of that will inevitably be lost in other countries.”
He continues, recalling how the project came from a committee from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. “They proposed a small part about this underprivileged neighbourhood and I was happy to accept it,” he says. “Then I went to this neighborhood that I had never known, despite living in Barcelona for many years. I made works for the museum very quickly, but I left a desire to develop the work.
Filmmakers have repeated the way neighborhoods like Valbona feel somewhat universal, given that “gentrification is a global phenomenon.” “The urban centers are converted into tourist attractions and essentially become theme parks that are inaccessible to locals. These are people who are later marginalized in the vicinity where more human normal daily lives remain. It’s a process that can be recognized everywhere.”
However, the director did not want to see the surrounding area “only as a space of damage.” In particular, he found great abundance in such a space. “It’s the same case as the film itself, and most of the spaces that offer freedom and creativity are not at the heart of the industry, and not very much around these areas.”
Guerin spent about a year choosing characters for the film, adding a little more at the time when filming began. Because his method involves simultaneously filming and editing “to evaluate the plotline and build deeper relationships with the people I film.”
“Each of these characters helps to integrate the general human landscape of the neighborhood,” the filmmaker says. “The Man Without Remember is associated with a residential block in the neighborhood that has no memory of the neighborhood. Some characters are farmers called Catalans from the original land. Others represent Spanish immigrants from the south, others represent world immigrants of the new century.”
A story of a good valley
Courtesy of the San Sebastian Film Festival
“From climate change to racism, immigration and real estate speculation, everything in the world feels there,” he emphasizes. “There are traces of the past and signs of the future, so I was adjusting those eras to the seasonal era and ultimately to the film itself. Viewers can intuitively in how the film is built.
The veteran also emphasizes that one of his great fights is “promotion of a festival that doesn’t discriminate against documentaries.” “Too often, documentary films are mostly considered television reports. Documentaries are not sociological, anthropological, or activist research tools, but they have to interact with the film itself.”
Last week, variety critic Owen Greiberman saw recent festival film examples such as Kauter Ben Hania’s Voice of Hind Rajab and James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg. We investigate the use of documentary footage in both films.
When raised in the question, Guerin says there is a certain degree of understatedness in the way the industry views documentaries as a social work and cause-driven film-only medium. “If you are filming the Nuremberg trial, your moral obligation is to seek the most accurate image without manipulation. Films sometimes need to know how to succumb to the cause, but the other thing is to make poor films poor and poor in documentary films.
“I’ve learned almost everything from fictional films, so to me, the division of documentaries and fiction is irrelevant,” he adds. “You have good movies and bad movies. Creating a documentary separation can sometimes be reduced to the goodness of what causes it to approach. Social films must be nurtured, but there is very little genuine critical thinking about documentary films.
“Good Valley Story” is a Spanish-French co-produced between the Los Ilsos Films, Perspective Films, 3cat, and Orfeiole Soaye, and was produced by Javier Rafaente, Jonas Truba, Gael Jones and Josel Is Gerin. Shellac handles sales.
