July 2012, Tokyo

2013, 2 min 10 sec

The construction of the Castelo de Bode Dam began in 1945. By the new reservoir we now meet three women born in the 1940’s, who still carry out one of the most ancient human crafts – weaving. The mysterious and pathetic character of life, the events of the subconscious and the mutations of the environmental landscape intertwine with the loom’s back and forth.

On our face, the bread we knead, In our mouth, the bread we all are. The sun on the snowy night, From the cold spring to the warm bonfire. The earthworm searches for the earth-hole, The furze surrounds the white birch, In a spiraling life. The cold kept us warm, And a hundred bolts of lightning opened us, We leave sad, yet happy. In three days plus three, plus one that is all. We are three, plus three, plus three, plus three, plus three, plus three, minus one who we all are.

A sensory, immersive composition takes us on a journey to a place that seems to have stopped in time but remains timeless. A female voice reads a mythological text on the origin of the world and sets the tone for a documentary-meditation on the presence of primeval elements – like water and flora – and their cohabitation with the natives, whose portraits intersperse the film. The stealthy camera follows a boat drifting across the calm waters of a river, as if the latter were the rings of a tree disclosing its history, in a movement that lulls us and drives us to the physical and metaphysical core. Finally, accompanied by an ancestral chant, the etching gives way to a sequence of images (which in turn emerge like a river reducing the field of action to the essential) and moves into a poetic terrain, summoning the imagination of each one.

The documentary almanac consists of 6 short stories united by the common theme "Where is the border of Europe". Six short stories made in the film train will make up one full-length documentary about modern Russia through the eyes of those who live in it and those who explore it. The project is a master class for young cinematographers "Kinopoezd: laboratory on wheels".

This film was made with series of images, over 4000, all them integrate a photographic recording that I have been carrying out for the past three years. Without any initial purpose that would circumscribe all these images, this photo diary drifts and accompanies many different circumstances, trips, places and people.

On the mythic Trans-Siberian train, in the 3rd class wagon, all kinds of stories can be heard. People from different nationalities as well as locals, workers, soldiers, students, ...they all share the same time and the same space, ...and along the journey, they even share their own lives... The theme of this movie is one of those stories, amongst many others. Two men travel on the same train, a Russian soldier and a Chechen man with his family returning from the motherland... Without them knowing a genuine link connects them, Chechnya. A war for independence, for a territory that Russia doesn't abdicate turns all Chechens into soldiers at birth.