07/09/2010

What does it mean to attend a festival? And what kind of relationships are built around an event that, by its very nature, should be collective? These are two questions which, in his own way, José Luis Guerin answers in his documentary Guest [+see also:
trailer
film profile], presented in the Horizons section.

The story is very simple: a talented Spanish director (Guerin) with a solid filmography under his belt, directs a film (In the City of Sylvia [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) which is selected in competition at the Venice Mostra in 2007. It is September, shortly before the film’s screening. The actresses are putting on their make-up in the hotel room; they’re playing around and joking to vent their excitement before they face the audience. Meanwhile, the director films these intimate moments.

This is the start of an adventure that will end a year later, in Venice again, where Guerin is chosen as a jury member. It’s a long journey because a film like In the City of Sylvia may aspire to theatrical distribution, but it gains visibility mainly through its selection at numerous international festivals.

In the documentary, we see nothing of the Venice screening. From the start, therefore, we understand that the director, the guest, is interested in looking outside what could be defined as the event’s epicentre. The camera bypasses this privileged place and focuses on an "elsewhere".

There are shots of places on the festival fringes, which are never involved and remain excluded from the tours, parties and red carpets. Who is really interested in discovering which city they’re staying in?

At a film festival, a world is created that doesn’t coincide with the other world, that which we all live in. So from Europe to the United States, from South America to Asia, Guerin ignores the signs indicating where the event in question is taking place (causing problems for organisers no doubt!) and heads for the periphery, where he needs no pass, letting himself be guided by a varied humanity which doesn’t live off its own self-representation, but represents life itself.

And this is Guerin’s approach to thinking and making films: life gives substance to a film, and viewers turn to the film to look for a possible meaning, among the multiple branches of existence.