10 · 06 · 07

Carlos Reygadas will follow his instincts.

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Vicente Castañar

[imagen]Before presenting his film, Luz silenciosa, Carlos Reygadas met with the press. He talked about his enthusiasm about filming what his instinct tells him to.

Daniela Michel, FICM’s director, while introducing Reygadas mentioned that his is one of her favorite Mexican movies: “we believe it is a masterpiece, he is a magnificent filmmaker who influences a lot of young short filmmakers, and his career is very interesting.”

Michel mentioned that both Stephen Frears, head juror at Cannes and Tavernier have talked about how much they like Reygadas’ work.

When being questioned about his counterculture goings, the filmmaker said: “it has never been my intention to be counterculture, I haven’t never analyzed how this culture is like in order to do counterculture, I just follow my instinct, my own feelings.”

About his films being Mexican he said: “I am Mexican but as a film lover I pretend no nationality whatsoever. Being Mexican has nothing to do with being part of the tradition of film-making.”

The filmmaker, who is known for his peculiar productions, explained that how he conceives the movies is related to constructing a reality: “I don’t believe in acting, I believe in a person’s capacity to feel, to identify him/herself with a certain situation.”

Reygadas also shared his views about understanding music in films: “I don’t believe that music is a part of cinematography, I just think that an image which is accompanied with some music is beautiful. Natalia López, my sound designer, shares this same idea, that is why we let the music of the earth be heard, we did right.”

[imagen] Cornelio Wall, who stars on the film, was at the conference, he talked about his experience at the film: “I didn’t know anything about Reygadas, I thought it was a prank call when he phoned me. The hardest part was crying and the sex scenes. Fortunately Carlos did not scold me much so I was able to work better. I didn’t mind the microphones, I’ve been working for 15 years on the radio, but at the beginning I was really scared by the cameras.”

Reygadas has filmed Japon and Batallas en el cielo. He mentioned that Luz Silenciosa is going to be distributed by him: Mantarraya Productions. “We are making 25 copies and we are going to distribute them all along the country, we hope its advertisement will be word of mouth. As a matter of fact two weeks ago we showed it at Cuauhtémoc (where it was filmed), and over 3 thousand people have already watched it. We are also going to distribute Los Bastardos by Amat Escalante and Un lugar en la tierra.”

Finally Reygadas mentioned that he was not really interested in his movie being nominated for best foreign film at the Oscars: “I really want to thank the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias y Artes Cinematográficas (Mexican School of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences) for choosing my film, this really helps us. I have many doubts about the Oscars, I believe it is an auto-celebration of the American movie way, they take films from other countries to add some quality.”