It all started with a question: Can a portrait be filmed? What are the implications of using the filmic mode to convey the existence of the other? To explore this notion in practice as well as in conceptual terms and to establish a creative dialectic, we contacted seven directors and seven individuals, the latter agreeing to welcome the directors to their home and be filmed by them. After several years, the experience soon became an annual event. Seven directors would later become the core of the project, known as the Laboratorio del Retrato Filmado, or the Laboratory of the Filmed Portrait, which took place between 2009 and 2013:  Adriana Fernández, Lucía Catoira, Noemí García, Pilar Monsell, Diana Gonçálvez, Xacobo Sanmartín and Pela del Álamo. For these seven filmmakers and their subjects Fina, Marina, Chus, Rodrigo, Palmira, Pepe and Celso, who took part and were transformed by the experience, this project became more than just a creative exercise; it represented a profound life experience.

And out of this project came a collectively-made film, or rather five films. “Ida e volta” (Round Trip) is the name given to these five films, the result of a workshop held every year during the festival: The portrait-through-encounter (or the product of a first impression), the portrait-through-memory (or what existed in the past), the portrait-through-others (or how to continue creating an image of the subject via the people in their circle), the portrait-through-landscape (or the connection one has to the place they belong to) and finally the portrait-as-mirror (or the image of myself, the seer, who offers up that “other” facing me).

Today we would like to revisit that experience in order to incite thought on the subject, to share and give the films some permanence. This has resulted in a website which offers spectators-turned-users the opportunity to revisit the Laboratory of the Filmed Portrait and its resulting “Round Trips”.

Sunday 26th, 5:30 p.m., Sala 2