Starting today, this 77-minute documentary on the social conscience of women can be seen on the national platform
SARAGOSSA. Fernando Vera is a director from Zaragoza who has lived in San Sebastián for more than a decade. It is full of projects: he is preparing a new documentary, ‘Los chords de la memoria’, where the therapeutic effects of music on Alzheimer’s patients are studied. edition ”, and at the same time preparing another project, inspired by the book ‘Nerín. Shared memories’ (Question), a choral narration of memories and sensations that has been more than a modest editorial success.
Fernando Vera is in the news for another thing: from today, the Filmin platform incorporates his documentary ‘Behind India’, a 77-minute play, shot during a month in various places in that country of 1.3 billion inhabitants, endless languages, races and, above all, “contrasts,” says Vera. It is a wonderful country, with incredible landscapes and pockets of misery and poverty that are difficult to explain », he points out. And he clarifies that he was a Filmin follower for a long time. «I really like being on the platform. She is small, enthusiastic and national, and she is committed to Spanish cinema, and to small films and projects, and I like that very much ».
‘Behind India’ is a project that was born from a proposal by the San Sebastian NGO Calcuta Ondoan, “very established there. It is small, but it serves about 50,000 people. Its manager, Iñigo Eguren, proposed that I make a film and suggested the perspective: social protests, demonstrations. I thought it was difficult, almost impossible, but we managed to do it. He is co-writer of the piece with me, ”he says. Vera has been surprised and moved by the attitude of the women: they are able to travel two full days to join a protest. Justice is conspicuous by its absence. Human rights, the same. Little by little, people become aware and dare to denounce, to rebel. I’m talking about all of this: ecofeminism, problems of nutrition, health, gender violence, etc. “, he explains.
The documentary can be paradoxical or equivocal: the country is so beautiful, so rich in nuances of landscapes, of lights in an exotic environment, that it could seem that, on occasion, one travels to Arcadia. Not so, of course. In any way. The common thread of the documentary, or the protagonist that unifies the story, is the young Santoshi, a village woman, mother of two children, another died. He works on a rice plantation and has no water at home. He decides to ask for what belongs to him. And he embarks on the journey to claim his rights in parliament. In one of his dialogues, with his tanned face and glowing eyes, he confesses: “My life and my land are the same.”
