Fiercely independent and fiercely fierce, few directors embody the spirit of permanent
opposition
like
Juanma Bajo Ulloa (Vitoria, 1967).
The filmmaker who surprised the world with
Butterfly Wings
(1991) and did it again with
La madre muerte
(1993) and insisted on doing it again with
Airbag
(1997) not only embodied in his always unique and free of prejudice gaze the best of the cinema of the 90s, he also blew himself up with him.
After years of lonely vindication of himself, he returns fully empowered with '
Baby
',
a film released in the midst of a pandemic that challenges audiences around the world (the film has toured the Tallinn, Cairo or Sitges festivals) with a script without words and for all languages.
Again the obsessive, cruel, beautiful and terrible world of the house;
and again, his unmistakable rant against all possible systems.
Is a movie in which nobody talks a provocation or a declaration of principles?
Otherwise, what does it mean in the age of television series in which everything is said and everything is written to make a film without dialogue? It is above all a sign of confidence in the viewer.
The movie tells people that we appreciate and want their performance.
They have indoctrinated us so much, they have mediated us so much ...
The problem is that we live in a world in which everything is so chewed up and so hackneyed that cinema has become a phenomenon for bulimics.
Cinema is only understood in terms of merchandise and consumption.
The viewer consumes and vomits.
What has been seen is no longer remembered.
Nothing remains.
We live in an especially manipulative moment because they are constantly telling people what to think and say. Do you consider yourself a messiah in the quest to end what you just described? The worst thing is that creators seem to feel comfortable being loved by the people. machine.
I meet colleagues who are happy to work for media groups and I am stunned.
You are hardly going to see a revolution with a large corporation or a bank behind it.
But we are so naive, innocent or stupid to believe it, what are we going to do? Is it the mission of culture and cinema to start a revolution? Yes, of course.
The problem is that culture has become rational when it should be visceral and emotional.
The cinema now makes it a logarithm.
And the politicians, who should be rational, are the visceral ones.
It's all perverted.
And the other way around.
He does not agree with what I see with the new audiovisual panorama featuring series ... I neither have a mobile phone nor do I watch series.
I go on the plane and there are people next to me watching movies and series on a mobile.
Is there anything more grotesque?
I talk a lot about the concepts of using and loving.
Seeing a series on a mobile is pure use, consumption.
A work is used to fill your time and at the same time you are used by that industry to turn the wheel.
The cinema, on the other hand, is kind to the viewer.
He does not delete it, he interrogates him
The cinema that has shaped me has been kind to me and I have been kind to him.
I have loved movies.
The act of going to the movies is an act of love.
It is the last liturgy left and it is also in danger.
Do you see the movies in danger of extinction?
All acts of love are in danger of extinction
.
The disconnection of the human being with himself is regrettable and irrevocable.
And absolute.
The only thing that is comparable to going to the movies is going to mass.
With the difference that in mass it is the same movie always.
In a way, 'Baby' is a return to the great themes that dominated his 90s cinema. Why that need or simple desire to return to the past? I have never left.
I have always been in the same place.
Even knowing what you want to tell and how to do it, you are not always right.
I work when I can.
The story, motherhood, the contrast of beauty and the terrible have always been present in my cinema.
The terrible thing is beautiful that is important. And childhood? I speak of creation, of life ... Childhood is paradise, it is the place where everything happens.
When you're at war and you've been shot, you call your mother.
You become a child.
It is childhood when everything happens.
I'm a student of the enneagram [a personality classification system] and everything is explained there.
In the first months of your life you decide how to behave in front of others and if you go to one extreme or the other.
In those early years you define yourself with respect to others.
Everything else is dragging that.
The first years are forever.
The creator never ceases to be a child.
You cannot start a play without playing.
Making movies is a game. And where did this obsession with the dark, the terrible? I always thought that my childhood had been hard and traumatic.
Until I discovered that of the others.
You realize that they have all been at one level or another.
Do you live better with success or with the indifference of others? People recognize you and that is good and bad.
You find yourself flattered and judged at the same time.
For better and for worse.
Envy is unleashed, jealousy ... You are not useful to a system because you are not helping the machine and you are harmful.
If you make an independent cinema that nobody sees, nothing happens.
But if you are independent and they see you, you become a danger.
When you do a popular comedy that is not in the service of the system machine, then wrong and you meet hostility.
And that's hard when you go it alone.
My career begins in a family production company in Vitoria.
We are two brothers and my mother.
Having your mother read that what you do is garbage is very hard.
Do we treat him so badly?
I have received death threats.
Mortgaging your house and not being able to pay it is hard.
Not being able to pay because there is a commission of gentlemen who do not subsidize you because they don't like you, it is hard too.
Is he stubborn or rebellious? It is very easy to become a rebel in an '
enfant terrible
'.
You just have to do your career and you already become the enemy of all, a problem.
You don't need to burn anything.
You just want to do something different.
At that moment you are already a problem for certain people.
Is there a price paid for being and showing off being independent? There is a price being paid for independence.
When you reach the public you have a power.
And what the system does, it tries to control you.
That happens with everything: the press and the artists.
If you win auteur film awards that nobody gives a damn about, then no problem.
You are a genious.
When you connect with people, the system itself is aware that you have a potential that must be driven.
If you don't accept, you become the enemy.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
cinema
culture
Clothes Hanging Erle Stanley Gardner and the case of Perry Mason
CineEnrique González Macho: "Of course tickets were bought to obtain subsidies, but it was never illegal"
Hollywood rebellion over Warner's betrayal of movie theaters
See links of interest
Check Christmas Lottery
Check Child Lottery
Internazionale - Crotone
Burnley - Fulham
Athletic Club - Elche
Alavés - Atlético de Madrid, live
Huesca - Barcelona, live