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Paintings in the Dark, by Paula Markovitch, was presented at the 15th FICM

Marco Antonio Mejía

As part of the Mexican Feature Film Section in competition for the fifteenth edition of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), the film Paintings in the Dark by Paula Markovitch (2017) was presented.

The story revolves around Marcos, a 65-year-old artist who works at a gas station. He has never been able to exhibit his paintings and has bitter thoughts about fate. Luis, a 13-year-old thief, breaks into his house thinking he is uninhabited and is the only witness to Marcos's work. A strange friendship that gives them new answers about the art and the life starts between them.

Paula Markovitch studied the technical career in Film and Television at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. She gave the Laboratory of Drama for Minimalist Cinema and Screenplay at the Center for Film Training (CCC). She was screenwriter of the Mexican films Sin remitente (1995, dir. Carlos Carrera), Temporada de patos (2004, dir. Fernando Eimbcke) and Lake Tahoe (2008 dir. Fernando Eimbcke). Her debut feature, El Premio (2011), won Best Mexican Feature at the 11th FICM.

The press screening for Paintings in the Dark was attended by director Paula Markovitch, who established the figure of her father was crucial to tell the story.

"It is inspired by my father, Armando Markovitch's life. A painter who did not exhibit his work in life; the origin of his anonymity placed him in the school of dictatorship and exiles. The exile had a tragic thing because it leaves people without culture and he could not present paintings because he didn't even have documents. There are many works that are omitted when there are cruel and oppressive systems."

The director's intention was to reflect on construction and destruction: "We are a humanity that somehow destroys its own treasures and that had me obsessed."

On the color and sound of the film, she said: "With the narrative style, I wanted to make a wave of moments, instants, not so much a sequence of cause and effect, that's why we work with a different color, temperature and sound as a formal narrative proposal. With the sounds we worked different textures, it was a search that was done with all the delicacy to generate the beauty of the noise, so that the film was a little stunning, something real."

Salvador Corrales, executive producer of the film and responsible for broadcasting the work done by the University of Communication, expressed the institution's commitment to continue with more collaborations.

"In this film, there is a side project, an exhibition of paintings by Paula's father. That's what we do at the university: supporting new and creative projects. We are already working on others."

Finally, Paula Markovitch announced that she is in the process of editing her next feature titled El actor principal, which talks about a young Mexican who attends an international film festival and reflects on the condescension of Europeans towards Latin Americans.