*How did you get into making films?
The impossibility of continuing to live a reality too much conditioned and devoid of deeper meanings—flat, mechanical, and mercantilist, with massive abysses crying out to be filled with humanism and poetry. The need for this world’s situations and myriad textures in every sphere of existence, impenetrable to the full frontal gaze, to be expressed from oblique observations.
*What inspired you to make your movie?
A desire to show the irrepressible impulse of humans to leap into their immediate reality with their passions, dreams, and propensity to hit or miss the target. The need we have to transcend our familiar “state of prostration” hoping to touch new surfaces with different textures found only in the unknown. To intuit our existence and try to call it an “achievement,” but because, in the end, it can only be built step by step, we must adorn that tragedy-strewn and comedic journey.
*How has your style evolved?
I don’t know that it has evolved. The scenes in my short subjects emerged from the depths of the void saturated with mystery, with no interference from reason or the social and cultural expressions of a country or a continent—only the human condition confronting every breathing thing around it. In contrast, my feature film Quijotes negros (Black Quixotes) was born of a historic and literary past of enormous transcendence in the culture to depict the absurdity of the circumstances in the life it generated, a transformation in me that could be attributed to the immutability of the universe where nothing is really immovable.
*Tell us any strange or funny stories while making the film?
One night while filming a scene on the beach, a friend called us from Quito, Ecuador’s capital high in the Andes, to tell us that it had been announced on television that a tsunami was going to hit the beaches, the result of an earthquake in a neighbouring nation. We stopped filming immediately, packed up our equipment, went to the closest town to tell the people what was about to happen, and we all headed for the hills. The town emptied out completely. We spent the night in the hills, but the tsunami never came. The next day we learned that the news on TV was mistaken: the earthquake hadn’t caused significant alterations in the behaviour of the sea. We went back down and continued filming with great relief.
*The Misrule Film Movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?
The desire to break the established cinematographic mold that has quelled the audience’s censorial growth. The intention to broaden the audience’s perception of what art could be. The possibility of transcending the status quo that demands docility and obedience of us.
*What can we expect from your next film?
That is still an enigma. For me, artistic construction has always meant a discovery that presents itself one frame at a time, although I begin from certain bases. In the process, the nuances of space and time begin to unfold that may be useful in configuring an important corpus leading to greater knowledge of myself, of humanity, of what surrounds me, and an ineffable consciousness from somewhere else.
