Fuente Álamo—The Caress of Time
Fuente Álamo—la caricia del tiempo
SPAIN / 2001 / Spanish / Color / 35mm (1:1.33) / 72 min
Director, Script: Pablo García
Photography: Marc Cistaré
Editing: David Vericat, Pablo García
Sound: Verónica Font Music: Los Cronopios
Executive Producer: Luis Miñarro
Producers: Ramón García, Nuria Pérez de Lara
Production Companies: Eddie Saeta, Doble Banda
World Sales: Eddie Saeta
Pasaje Permanyer, 14 08009 Barcelona SPAIN
Phone: 34-93-467-70-40 Fax: 34-93-467-74-89
E-mail: eddie@eddiesaeta.com URL: www.eddiesaeta.com
A day in Fuente Álamo, a small village in Spain. Blinding sunlight pours down. Teenagers chat among themselves, young women work in a shoe factory, farmers work the fields, a grandmother attends to the housework; the uneventful lives of these villagers unfold peacefully. A film bathed in a warm gaze that cherishes time as it drifts by.
[Director’s Statement] There are things that are forgotten with time, but when some seven years of work is needed to complete the cycle of filmmaking, that is, when you reach the screen, I cannot forget the reasons why I started this job in the first place. I cannot forget that the emotions and a memory of childhood moved me to talk about time and life . . . . Neither can I forget that I have done it from the profound love for film and its language. And I can never forget because the first film is always made from one’s heart, from the guts and with conscience. I wish all filmmakers could afford to continue working, always being moved by, among other things, these values that are forgotten more and more every day.
Fuente Álamo shows, in the course of one day, from daybreak till night, four generations who live in a small village in the province of Albacete, Spain: boys and girls, young people, and old people . . . they give, through their stares, expressions, solitude, and their everyday actions, something of their lives, something that is also universal and has to do with our own lives.
Although the village of Fuente Álamo gives its name to this film, my principle intention was not at all to create a portrait of this very place. To the contrary, the place was nothing but an excuse for trying to capture, with care and love, something that is inside, something that cannot be defined with words, something that, lucky as I am, only cinema enables me to convey. I wanted to caress the face of my grandmother; I wanted to caress the face of children; I wanted to caress the night, the sun, the sounds . . . in the end, I tried to caress something of life.
Pablo GarcíaBorn in 1970. Between 1987 and 1991 studied general and advertising photography in Valencia and Barcelona and video at Barcelona’s Centro de la Imagen, and took a film scriptwriting course taught by Simon Feldman. From 1990 to 1994 studied film direction and scriptwriting at Centro de Estudions Cinematogr ficos de Catalunya with Jos Luis Guerin, Gerardo Gormezano, and Luis Aller, among others. Also studied photography at seminars conducted by Ricardo Aronovich. Worked as director of photography on La muerte súbita (1995), Ilusionismo (1996) and 22° a la sombra (1998). Fuente Álamo is his directorial debut. Has since directed Alicia retratada (2002), and Prestìge, Memorìe of a Galician Village (2003) is in production. |