Towards a cinematographic poetic realism

Film-makers Carla Simón and Elena López Riera have spent some time discussing how to define a kind of film that avoids the label of realism. In films like Alcarràs and Romería, Simón explores family memory from a subjective point of view, in her last film to the point of oneirism. López Riera, in El agua, exploits landscape and legend as forces affecting collective awareness. As López Riera argues in her article for Caimán, these film-makers set out to explore new ways of seeing that bring into play a “subjective perception as an aesthetic and political tool”. To do this, they take as their guide the maxim of Henry James in his text “The Art of Fiction”: to let reality be a sinuous pretext through which to formulate imagination. This conversation will be another chance to go on thinking together about these questions.