Pedro Almodóvar: "Without aid there is no independent cinema and without it, a country is left without memory"

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Last night one of the most recurring dreams among the 3.6 million spectators of the Goya Awards gala is that after the gala came another.

Actually, that happened. As soon as the last and most important of the awards was given, the one of the film of the year, the actor of the year, Antonio Banderas , started dancing. Not in your home or your own, not with joy. He danced on the stage because the crazy scale (or script) of all that required it. It was a musical number that recalled, as far as its opportunity is concerned, the first of the night that had been contemplated almost four hours before. The two so perfectly dispensable, absurd and out of place that they even inspired tenderness.

"I haven't seen you dance," Almodóvar told Banderas in the backstage. "I could not," he added. He did not know, but his words were right to describe what had happened to much of sleepless Spain . No one saw him. And nobody did it before the obvious fear that this number was the beginning of a new gala. Then the dream began. Nightmare better.

Anyway, Almodóvar and his seven awards all appeared. Together and happy. They did it with the gala accomplished, exhausted. Like everyone The director commented that he did not expect anything, that, despite receiving the mention of best screenplay in the first third of the ceremony, that did not create illusions . "The Goya are serious Awards and, therefore, you cannot predict anything. You get nervous at the end and nervous you have to endure being named or not." And said which and without question in between ran to make clear which of all the honors achieved was the most excited. " Without a doubt, the assembly . We both debuted, with each other, and I do believe that the films are made in the editing room. At that moment, hearing the name of Teresa Font , I felt happy and already yes satisfied. " The director, remember, is the first film he rides without the advice and hands of the late Pepe Salcedo . And hence, no doubt, happiness. And the satisfaction.

And how does one assume the role of being the most awarded director , and therefore important , since the creation of the Goya Awards in 1986? And here Almodóvar is known with the duty of modesty. Real or fake, what does it matter, but modesty. "The films remain the same with or without prizes . I strongly believe that the films survive the authors. My life does not depend on prizes or numerical agendas ... But don't get me wrong, I am very grateful," he says and there leave it.

He tells, and repeats, that the film is not autobiographical, that he is scared of 'biopics', that yes, that part of himself , his house and his things, to reach fiction, but everything has a limit. "I've never had the feeling that in front of me was my own life," he says and then rectifies: "Actually, reality influences both fiction and vice versa. I will say more: there are gestures Antonio uses and invents to make his character that I have been engraved and that now I am the one who copied and incorporated ". Life and fabulation from back to front. And backwards. And one more: "Reality and fiction are always together and separated at the same time. That's what representation is."

Almodóvar does not know, and thus recognizes it, the place that this film has to occupy neither in his life nor in his filmography. "I would not know how important it is. I imagine you have to wait for time to pass. Everything that has happened with it has been a real surprise . How such a personal and intimate film can become so universal is a true mystery "I have not moved from the two tiles that I floor and why does it reach all the tiles in the world? No idea. I was expecting a minority tape and no, the viewer has felt identified. Many people do not see me with my mother, but himself with his own mothers . And that is the greatest joy, for people to be identified and reflected. "

Cultural policy

And now, politics, cultural politics that is also political culture. Is Almódóvar afraid of the moment the Spanish author's cinema is going through ? Is that why you have addressed Pedro Sánchez at the gala? "We are in the middle of a whirlwind in which nothing is as it was. But of all the spectrum of the cinema the most fragile is the independent cinema, the cinema that is born of the necessity, and that is not included neither in the platforms nor in the televisions And it is necessary that the State protects it because that cinema is our memory.Without aid there is no independent cinema and without it, a country is left without fiction, without memory.The cinema does not only represent the world of cinema, it represents its spectators ".

And it goes on: "It hurts me that in all these political campaigns we have suffered, the word cinema and the word culture have never been mentioned." And one more: "Let's compare with France. Buñuel said that Madame Bovary is known by more Spaniards than the Regent . And there we fail. It is not 'chauvinism', it is awareness of the importance of culture in the life of everything, of society, from Spain ... It will be a matter of going to visit the new cabinet. " It is clear.

And with that said, the gala started again. Or was it a dream? I get lost.

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• Pedro Almodovar
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