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“Para mí era importante hablar de algo con lo que tuviera cercanía”. Entrevista con Sebastián Molina, director de Las hostilidades

Alonso Díaz de la Vega

En el marco del 19° Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia (FICM), se estrenó Las hostilidades del director Sebastián Molina, documental que integra la Sección de Documental Mexicano.

La película se ubica en Santa Lucía, lugar del que es originario el director, y donde en los últimos años la violencia y el índice de criminalidad han aumentado considerablemente. Buscando una mirada íntima y real de la situación. Sebastián trabajó de la mano con su familia, en especial con sus primos quienes son los protagonistas del documental.

El FICM tuvo la oportunidad de platicar con el director Sebastián Molina. 

Alonso Díaz de la Vega: Did you get any permission from the community to film Las hostilidades?

Sebastián Molina: Yes. It is the town my family comes from, my dad, so permission came from my family. I told them "I have to do a project for school," and they said, of course you need to, and that's it. It was very simple, I didn't have any complications. This came as an exercise in my documentary year at CCC, they gave us 15 days to film and I filmed the whole movie in those 15 days. When I was choosing a topic, I decided to choose something that I already knew because I didn't feel I had the authority to talk about something that only took me 15 days to know. For me, it was important to talk about something I was already close to, that's why it was very easy, because of the relationships I had with the people of Santa Lucía.

ADV: How did your family react to the idea for your film?

SM: Their reaction was very good, I think I have always counted on the unconditionality of my two families. Since I told them I wanted to do it, they told me "What do you need? How can we help you?" They were always willing to be there for me.

ADV: Something that we find very interesting in your work is the way you play with the filmic form. Did you have any influence when you made the film? Maybe Jonas Mekas?

SM: Yes, Jonas Mekas was someone I saw a lot at school. The biggest influence for this documentary was Harmony Korine films like Julien Donkey-Boy and Gummo; that type of approach towards other types of realities, that which is in the middle that is neither rural nor urban. Those little-explored realities that I have the good fortune to know and have lived.

Music also had a great influence, an issue that was very important to me in the film was to mark a distance with the characters because, no matter how much the characters were my family, they have lived a life that I have not lived; I made my life in Mexico City and they made theirs in Santa Lucia. They have been closer to violence, insecurity and drug trafficking in a much more present way than I have been. In that sense, music was very important to me because it defined my point of view. On the documentary, we listened to the music they hear there, but also suddenly I put use guitars and sounds that would seem not to belong to there, finally, that reflects my point of view.

Memory was also very important to me, my training at school is as a cinematographer, so for me, it was very important to make sure that not everything looked too clear, but that it felt like a memory, like a remembrance. The visual representation of the documentary was very important to me, always thinking about how things were, how I remember them, that it did not feel too clear because it would be seen as an absolute truth and for me, it was important that it be seen as something subjective.

ADV: In a way, you avoid moralizing in the film, in addition to resorting to music and other elements, how else did you want to stay away from that?

SM: For me it was very important to first define respect for the characters and then the distance, then another of the ways that I found not to be intrusive, because suddenly I feel that sometimes the filmmaker can fall into being messianic, thinking that they have the answers or the solutions. For me, that was it, to underline that I don't have any solution and that this is just my point of view. The way I found was to become a character, the documentary begins with my voice, I am speaking, I say that I come from this place, but I don't really belong. I became another character in the narrative.

ADV: Was it difficult to keep the documentary from suddenly revolving around your experience?

SM: Yes, in the end, that was complicated because you have two moments in the making, at least in a documentary: the moment of filming and the other that is editing. Also, the montage because that's where you finish building what you want to say and you can alter many things, so for me giving this honesty to the work meant that I didn't meddle in the filming or editing, but seeing myself as a character and giving the town of Santa Lucía its space –my uncles, my cousins– and from there, finding its own identity. Because at the end of the day I believe that it is an exercise of identity, of this type of place that is in the middle.

ADV: Do you think that cinema can help you reconcile with the past?

SM: Yes, I think that cinema can help you with many things, and reconciling yourself with the past can clearly be one of them. Especially when it comes to memory issues. But above all, what I think cinema does the most is open minds and allow you to see other points of view, and not be too absorbed in your own universe.

ADV: Something important that you mentioned was the editing, how was the process to determine what you would keep and what would go?

SM: First, I had a narrative structure that I had planned, I knew that this was not going to be a totally linear question. I knew that my greatest narrative influences were Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo and La Feria de Arreola, so it was about how the portrait of a person or a place is generated based on all the voices. Pedro Páramo is based on all the voices he knew, and La Feria is the portrait of town based on all the people who have lived in that place. I that structure in mind, which was to be a prismatic portrait of Santa Lucia and my family in three layers, with three narratives: mine, that of my main characters – my two cousins–, and then that of the whole town of Santa Lucia.

In the end, I had that structure and I divided it in a matter of days; I had this notion of time passing, then we started at night, the day came and then night again. For five days, I had this notion of time passing and at the same time feeling that it wasn't moving at all.

ADV: Are you interested in continuing with this question and exploring the past in your next wors? What will be your trend?

SM: I think that the topic in this documentary, which is one that I am also trying to explore in another documentary that I am working on, is actually youth. I am interested in what it is to be young and live in these kinds of places like Santa Lucia. Now I am making another documentary about skaters in Durango, which is a city in the desert, and I also find this question of identity and community in a city that has little to offer for the skater community but still exists very interesting. Yes, I think my themes now are youth.

I am very struck by the underground and I feel it's not well represented, so I would like to see those things that I have come to know and that call my attention to see them on the big screen.

ADV: Is there any personal motivation behind this?

SM: Yes, I think this is a punk matter of what I want to do because no one has done it.

ADV: Why do you think there is this need to see themes in the cinema that are more personal?

SM: Because I think that, at least, something that I really enjoy is seeing honesty reflected in what is done. I really enjoy seeing something and feeling that this work is honest. When someone talks about themselves or from their own perspective, I think those are the films I most enjoy watching most, the ones that I feel are the least pretentious.