European Films

Isaki Lacuesta in Rotterdam for the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Photo portraits by Fabrizio Maltese for europeanfilms.net. All rights reserved.

Isaki Lacuesta may call Barcelona his home town, but for his second feature he went to San Fernando Island, in the bay of Cadiz off the Southern tip of the Iberian peninsula. His Tiger Awards entry La leyende del tiempo (The Legend of Time, a reference to works by both Garcia Lorca and Camarón) erases the lines between documentary and fiction and tells two almost-true stories consecutively; of the young gypsy boy Isra, played by a boy called Isra, and of the Japanase woman named Makiko who is also played by a namesake. Their lives on San Fernando are entwined with that of its most famous offspring: the legend of Flamenco cante Camarón, who died shortly before Isra’s birth and whose music made Makiko decide to come to San Fernando from the other side of the world.

Lacuesta first came up with the idea of doing a film on and about San Fernando when he traveled around the Spanish South four years ago. He noticed the landscapes – both urban and natural landscapes are an important part in Lacuesta’s film – and some very interesting people that should have interesting stories to tell, including a noticeable presence of Japanese girls.

“Of course it was important to have faith in finding interesting stories there,” Lacuesta tells us, “Especially because there is no guarantee about what and how much you will find. We did not know from the beginning how many stories we would have – ten, five or two. We did not have an actual shooting script at the start [when looking for financing] but rather a ten page declaration of intent to film landscapes and stories. The film was made with some of the same crew who made [last year’s Tiger Awards winner from Spain, the documentary] El cielo gira (The sky turns) from Mercedes Alvarez. In fact we attended the same film school.

“Since we shot on video, we could allow ourselves to pursue different stories to see if any of them led anywhere and then select which ones to pursue more fully. In all, we shot about 90 hours of film. Isra came in for a casting but we only really got interested in him when we heard what his story was from another child. I was especially interested in him since he is part of the first generation from San Fernando who only grew up with the ghost of Camarón. He pursued singing when younger but stopped when he father died and he was not allowed to sing because of his mourning rituals – and then his voice broke. He may not have been conscious of it himself, but he looks and acts a bit like Camarón, with his hair and his attitude.

“One of the things I like about the film is that in fact there are several possible incarnations of the same character, who could be Camarón. We have his brother in Makiko’s section who teaches her how to sing like Camarón and he could be considered to be a vision of how Camarón would have been had he still lived. Isra on the other hand could be considered a younger version of the singer. We tried very hard to capture the physical changes in our characters.

“Both Makiko’s and Isra’s stories are very similar to their own stories. The only character that was invented was Jonji, an elder Japanese man who appears in both stories and thus acts as a bridge between the two, all the other characters “play” themselves. I did not like the idea of Makiko and Isra meeting because they move in different environments, so I decided to tell the stories in a linear fashion, one after the other. Most of the dialogues were created in collaboration with the actors, sometimes with more input from my side, sometimes less. There are scenes when I informed only one of the characters what was to happen, such as the scene in which Isra goes to see Jonji and they play with the knife; Isra’s fear on his face is probably real,” [laughs].

The film paints a very cinematic picture of the island and its people, stretching the abilities of soft focus, close ups and the incredible natural light to their maximum extents. “Our cinematographer Diego Dussuel has a background in both fiction and non-fiction and like with most of the crew, we share a similar idea of cinema. It also helps that we have all worked together before. Most of all on this film, we tried to let us be inspired by what was actually in front of the camera and thus in front of us.”

Lacuesta’s inspiration from what he has seen on San Fernando has certainly not let us down, as La leyenda del tiempo is a beautifully captured and staged moment of reality for the cinema.