Xisela Franco

Una mujer se desplaza por una ciudad, Vigo. Cineasta, escritora, caminante entre ruinas. Margarita Ledo. Busca una señal que la lleva a la fábrica de cerámica Álvarez. Pasos perdidos sobre escombros y, a su vez, una experiencia plagada de interrogantes, del paso del tiempo, de los distintos estados de la desaparición que llevan a la muerte pero que, paradójicamente, aparecen como memoria viva de una ruptura traumática. El cartel como acto de invocación de una ciudad fabril que se fue, patrimonio industrial ensombrecido por la crisis y la especulación. Y el cuerpo en movimiento y la solidaridad, como actos de esperanza. O el cine, resina y oro que reconstruye sobre las fracturas del pasado.

Una mujer se desplaza por una ciudad, Vigo. Cineasta, escritora, caminante entre ruinas. Margarita Ledo. Busca una señal que la lleva a la fábrica de cerámica Álvarez. Pasos perdidos sobre escombros y, a su vez, una experiencia plagada de interrogantes, del paso del tiempo, de los distintos estados de la desaparición que llevan a la muerte pero que, paradójicamente, aparecen como memoria viva de una ruptura traumática. El cartel como acto de invocación de una ciudad fabril que se fue, patrimonio industrial ensombrecido por la crisis y la especulación. Y el cuerpo en movimiento y la solidaridad, como actos de esperanza. O el cine, resina y oro que reconstruye sobre las fracturas del pasado.

Four filmmakers working in the region of Galicia (in the northwest of Spain) follow and portray on the screen Galician artists working in disciplines of different nature. The result is four pieces around the creative process of these artists. Lois Patiño film their parents working on their paintings in their studio in Vigo, Jaione Camborda films dancer Janet Novás rehearsing for one of her pieces, Xisela Franco follows film director Margarita Ledo revisiting the location of her latest film Nation and Alfonso Zarauza reflects on the relationship between actress-director by putting together the work of Melania Cruz in two of their collaborations.

Hyohakusha is a lyrical trip to Japan, passing through Galicia (magic land in the northwest of Spain). Two women filmmakers recover twenty forgotten rolls of Super8 that showed the journey of two Galicians to different places of Japan in 1973, and with this material, and the reflections and emotions of his owner watching the rolls for the first time (the son of the travelers) with her wife, that is Japanish and could not know her father in law that died soon after that trip, these two filmmakers give birth to a new story seeking suggestive relations between the two countries (half of the film is filmed by them in Galicia, also in Super8). This filmmakers during the process of making this film are reading a book of haikus of Basho, that wrote in his lyrical diary "Oku no Oshomichi" about the beauty of some of the places where this Galician couple went to visit in their trip to Japan many centuries later. So some passages of this travelogue are included too.

There are towns that build their lives from the will where the inert reigns, where the landscape is arid and dead and there are only infinite extensions of sand and stones. Forgotten, disregarded, doomed to the most extreme survival, the Sahrawis still retain their hope for justice.