1. INT. TABAKALERA, CINEMA - DAY
It’s raining and cold outside, we deduce that it is winter. A group of women in colorful coats, scarves, and with backpacks enter the movie theater. Some greet each other, it seems they have not seen each other for a long time. Others have just met for the first time and introduced themselves. They gradually occupy the first rows of the cinema room.
The lights go out suddenly and they hurry to take their seats. Agnès Vardá appears on the screen, in the foreground, challenging the spectators. She proposes a game to them.
"When I shot" Ulysse ", I realized to what extent each person can interpret an image in a different way. Then the idea of a series in which every day we show a photo at the same time on television came to me, for ten or fifteen seconds, without saying anything, or who it is from, or where the photo was taken, or what it represents .. "
Different photos follow one another on the screen. A shot from "Cléo de 5 á 7", a portrait of a woman in Algeria, a collage, a photo from May 68, a mass grave, the self-portrait of two lovers ... One image after another. After observing each image in absolute silence, and as if it were a contest, Vardá reveals who took it and analyzes it in more detail. She reveals, for example, that the group portrait we see on the screen belongs to her family. It was 1913 and the entire Vardá family posed in a row, by height, not by age. But something does not fit the photo. They all look at the camera, except two women. Her mother and her grandmother are looking for something concrete “offstage”.
What do they look for? Why it's only them?
The light from the screen illuminates the faces of the spectators. And thus, playing to read images with Agnes Vardá, is how the meeting of the NOKA Mentoring program starts, bringing together the selected directors and tutors of the first three editions of the program.
2. INT. TABAKALERA, REHERSAL ROOM - DAY
A dance and rehearsal room converted into a workspace for several days. The same participants that we have seen in the movie theater are taking seats around a large table located in the center of the room. One of them finds a hard drive in her backpack, connects her laptop to the screen, and tests the sound.
Does it work?
I will start.
And the conversations begin with each director sharing the materials from their hard drive -the dossier, the script rundown, the first shoots, the teaser ...- as well as sharing the moment of the project. The future of female filmmakers, female filmmakers of the future.
Estibaliz Urresola about 20.000 ESPECIES DE ABEJAS; Tamara Lucarnini about EL PESO; Irati Gorostidi about ANEKUMEN; Sara Fantova about JONE, A VECES; Marina Palacio about Y ASÍ SEGUIRÁN LAS COSAS; Clara Rus about ESTE LUGAR Y NO CUALQUIER OTRO; Maddi Barber about CLAROS DE BOSQUE; and Nagore Eceiza about IF YOU WISH TO MAKE AN APPLE PIE.
Both active listening and discussions are triggered. Questions such as the following take over the reflections: What tools do we have to "work with life" in the cinema? How to find the right person in a casting? Intuition or training? How to show unconditional love on the screen? What references does each film have? How to reach that cinematic “forest clearing” that María Zambrano described so well and that Maddi now shares out loud?
El claro del bosque es un centro en el que no siempre es posible entrar...
Es otro reino que un alma habita y guarda…
No hay que buscarlo. No hay que buscar.
Es la lección inmediata de los claros del bosque:
no hay que ir a buscarlos, ni tampoco a buscar nada de ellos.
The conversation is only interrupted when the photographer enters the room to capture the moment. And, as if it were the Vardá family, he portrays the NOKA family. Three promotions together, all looking at the same point.Celia Rico, Nagore Eceiza, Irati Gorostidi, Estibaliz Urresola, Tamara Lucarnini, Vanesa Fernández, Mar Coll, Maddi Barber, Clara Rus, Sara Fantova, Marina Palacio, Noemí Cuetos, Lur Olaizola and Sara Hernández.
Epilogue
INT. TABAKALERA, CINEMA - DAY
We recognize the same movie theater. The credits of a western on screen. The lights go on and Maider Oleaga closes the meeting. Sitting informally in the front row of the movie theater, she shares the process of her latest film KUART VALLEY with the participants. Her approach to the project, her look as a director, her doubts on the way and the final result. That's what this meeting is about.
The western session ends with the screening of a specific sequence, the beginning of Forty Guns. Barbara Stanwyck on a white horse leading an army of cowboys. Maider leading this contemporary cowboy movie.
The meeting, on the other hand, will end in another place, around a meal, all together, looking for those films that will soon be seen on the screen, those that remain to be made. Maybe that's the “off-field” that NOKA filmmakers stare at in the picture.
