Ida Vitale: "A comma can change the destiny of a man"

• Malaga Festival A documentary rescues the lifeless life of the child painter who disappeared in the 80s

• Inauguration The melodramatic failure of Elvira Lindo in her debut as a film director

The distance from

to

is in italics.

The first, the one that is round and upright, is an almost hundred-year-old poet (she turns one century on November 2) who speaks energetically, looks into the eyes of the questioner and laughs.

She is amused by the supposedly deep questions and buoyed by childhood memories of her.

"My memory fails me, but it only shortens it," she says smugly.

The second, the one that reads slightly lying to the right, thin and elegant, is the star of the moment at the Malaga Festival.

(in italics) is a documentary that could be described as intimate.

Maybe lyrical.

But, above all, profoundly beautiful in its calm, in its light and, much more important, in his voice.

It is a film signed by

and built with words that are also images;

with images that speak slowly and very clearly.

There, in

Ida Vitale is heard saying that it is memory that chooses us, not the other way around;

that she prefers Buster Keaton to Chaplin;

that she is bothered by the boredom of the repeated and the novelty of the unjustified.

And so.

Ida Vitale is a poet, she is a Cervantes Prize winner, she is a woman of the century, of a century, who travels the world and through time and who, as has already been said, is in Malaga today.

Ida Vitale and

In round and italics.

When he published his last book, all the interviews began by emphasizing the latter.

Is a movie a better way to say goodbye? I would never talk about last [breaks out laughing].

Let's say that in the same way that I am not responsible for the photo they took of me as a baby, I am not responsible for this documentary either.

The idea of ​​the documentary did not come with me, it is not innate. In the film he talks about his relationship with the cinema.

When did it start? As a teenager.

I remember perfectly a cinema called Ariel that offered a very fractured program.

You could see cartoons, a national news, then a world news... In between, a short movie of, for example, The Three Stooges.

The cinema was on my way to the Lyceum.

And when I got out of class I spent my lunch money there.

I have to say that what I liked the most,

What really fascinated me was the news. In the film he says that he likes Buster Keaton more than Chaplin... Did I say that?

It surprises me. It's in the documentary. In that case, it's a good idea not to contradict yourself.

Could be.

Yes it's true that Buster Keaton's humor is weirder, it's not all laughing because you stumbled.

Many times you think that the fundamental actor in comedian movies is the stone placed in the middle of the road. And now, does he look good on the screen suddenly turned into a movie star? It is an experience that one has and is archived.

I don't think many people see the movie.

And look, it was four years of work.

Although, the truth is, the work that took me to live during all that time was greater [he laughs again]. Do you trust words or images more? Literature has been with me since very early.

She was a schoolmate of the daughter of the most important poet of the moment in Montevideo.

Then I grew up and met another poet, Fernando Pereda, an exquisite man who nobody took into account because he was so elegant that he didn't mix with the mundane things of the newspapers and that.

And there I realized that poetry cannot be spilled.

Image of 'Ida Vitale'. WORLD

Do you think that we are losing relation with the word in this world flooded with images? I suppose that the world tends towards what is comfortable, towards what is least difficult.

I don't know if in the next century there will be someone who opens a book and reads.

Perhaps we forget that books have an index. In the film he complains about what he calls "gerunditis", about that habit of using the gerund for everything.

Do you think that we speak worse and worse? It could be. In Spain, the Academy of Language has just experienced a "stormy" controversy about whether or not to use the adverb alone.

It has been decided to remove it... They are comfortable.

I think that spelling is work, because all things that are important are work.

I will tell you that I started as a lawyer and then I left it.

But what I learned is that a word can have a definitive weight;

one word can seal a man's fate.

I never cared about law, but I did care about the language of law.

You can change an entire life with a single comma.

There is something very annoying about filling something with words when you don't know what you are talking about. On the other hand, language is the repository of memory. Of memory and anti-memory.

It all depends on how we use it.

It is convenient not to attribute to language more powers than it already has.

I would say that language is as important as an egg in a kitchen.

I don't really know if it's worth as an image [he breaks out laughing again]. The documentary talks a lot about memory.

He goes so far as to say that reality is lived twice: in the ephemeral moment of living it and in the eternal moment of remembering what has been lived. Who wrote that sentence? You. Wow.

But memory has a life of its own.

Things are fixed in the memory sometimes without really knowing why.

And with oblivion the same thing happens.

We cannot choose what we forget.

Oblivion, unfortunately, operates alone without our intervention. With so many years of exile behind you, is there anything you would have preferred to forget? Yes, of course, but now is not the time to remember it [laughter]. What do you think is the most important change that has undergone the century that has lived?

The one about the woman, perhaps? I'm going to be honest, the subject of the woman rots me.

It gives the impression that because you are a woman and by obligation you have to like all women now.

I don't like that about the organization by commissions and all that.

My family was very matriarchal. How will you celebrate your centenary?

Does it force you to turn a century? No way.

I'm still standing

With so many years of exile behind you, is there anything you would have preferred to forget? Yes, of course, but now is not the time to remember it [laughter]. What do you think is the most important change that the century you have lived has undergone? ?

The one about the woman, perhaps? I'm going to be honest, the subject of the woman rots me.

It gives the impression that because you are a woman and by obligation you have to like all women now.

I don't like that about the organization by commissions and all that.

My family was very matriarchal. How will you celebrate your centenary?

Does it force you to turn a century? No way.

I'm still standing

With so many years of exile behind you, is there anything you would have preferred to forget? Yes, of course, but now is not the time to remember it [laughter]. What do you think is the most important change that the century you have lived has undergone? ?

The one about the woman, perhaps? I'm going to be honest, the subject of the woman rots me.

It gives the impression that because you are a woman and by obligation you have to like all women now.

I don't like that about the organization by commissions and all that.

My family was very matriarchal. How will you celebrate your centenary?

Does it force you to turn a century? No way.

I'm still standing

maybe? I'm going to be honest, the issue of women rots me.

It gives the impression that because you are a woman and by obligation you have to like all women now.

I don't like that about the organization by commissions and all that.

My family was very matriarchal. How will you celebrate your centenary?

Does it force you to turn a century? No way.

I'm still standing

maybe? I'm going to be honest, the issue of women rots me.

It gives the impression that because you are a woman and by obligation you have to like all women now.

I don't like that about the organization by commissions and all that.

My family was very matriarchal. How will you celebrate your centenary?

Does it force you to turn a century? No way.

I'm still standing

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Malaga

• cinema