Sant Adrià de Besòs, 1960. Filmmaker
Isabel Coixet
once again opts for the Goya as best director for her latest film, 'Nieva en Benidorm': a story of paradoxical love affairs in this city-paradox on the shore of a degraded Mediterranean.
What did you feel when you visited Benidorm for the first time? It was arriving and I wanted to go. It is that everything surpassed me. We are talking about a privileged area and I already know that many urban planners, architects, friends, defend this model of vertical development. But our scale is not that. Or at least the one that seems desirable, livable and human. Yes, there are things about Benidorm that I began to fascinate and like later. Why do they attract contradictions like Benidorm? A filmmaker, an artist, what he is looking for is paradoxes and contradictions. Lautréamont's story that poetry is the meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating room table. That is always the fertile ground for my stories. Like an oil rig in the North Sea, which is one of the hardest places in the world. And suddenly there is from a guy obsessed with mussels that stick to the columns of the platform to a love story that seems very beautiful to me. At first, 'Nieva en Benidorm' was not a fiction. I started wanting make a documentary about the degradation of the Mediterranean coast from the Manga del Mar Menor, which was already starting 12 years ago. I interviewed Slavoj Zizek a while ago ... He's funny, isn't he? It also has several tics, that you can not stop looking at his face. As someone with a 'pipe eye' ... What is the 'pipe eye'? Well, what Thom Yorke and Oriol Junqueras have. Ah, I didn't know. I love. 'Pipe eye'. It's a great title. The fact is that Zizek defended that perhaps the future of humanity goes through the model of Japan, with some overpopulated areas where people contaminate each other, and another area of Nature. Obviously, Zizek is a guy who is already a professional provocateur. With which, if people go that way, he will go the other way. But the good thing is to ask yourself questions. The other day I asked a group of scientists: If we all go back to normal life, what would happen? Everybody threw themselves on top of me. But I'm not anti-vaccine. Really, I am with both arms, ready to have them all put on me: the Chinese one, the one from Dolly Parton, the one from those who make Viagra ... The Russian one too? All except the Russian one. The fact is that there is always the informed person who tells you that Moderna and Pfizer modify DNA. Well, it's not that my DNA is very there. They still modify it for the better. But, in summary, it seems that at this moment questioning things and asking yourself questions, which is something natural and which makes information and knowledge grow, causes them to be thrown at you. Has this pandemic moment been inspiring? As for introspection, my navel interests me zero. I am interested in the navel of others. I am interested in listening to conversations, going to the theater. I already know my world, I want to know the world of others. The recollection has never worked for me. Not even to write? To get to the moment of writing I need that previous process. And that process, of course, is not in my house, that I have already cooked all the cakes in the world and I have a wonderful television, with great sound and I have already seen Bela Tarr's films three times, I don't want to see them again. That being said, I believe that every creator finds their way to get things done. This does not motivate me, but there are still people who do. Why does it not motivate them? Because I have the feeling that I have already read this and seen it in movies. 'Contagion', by Soderbergh. Not only that. There is a novel, 'The Memory Police', by a Japanese author named Yko Ogawa, which they are now adapting for an HBO series. If there is a book that defines this moment, this is it. It is neither Orwell, nor Huxley, nor anything. Maybe nothing can be 'taken out' of this situation. One of the things that has me a little paralyzed is the idea of: In the fictions that I write, do I have to put this in ? Did it happen, is it still happening? How does this affect behaviors? The avalanche of common places also saturates me all the time, even language is reduced: pandemic, first confinement, vaccine, the destruction of the Government, of all of them, all the time ... And me, who in my grave will put the Sábato's phrase, "I am moved by the details, not the generalities", this kills me. In what sense? There comes a time when ranting about everything leads nowhere. And I like to rant, but I do it in my head, sometimes in public. But every day, at all hours, you lead us to a shitty black hole. And how does it take to rant about you? A sense of humor saves me, because there are days when you wake up and read certain things ... you live all the people you have been. And when you think that one of those people is already in the 'retirement home', it turns out that no, that the vulnerable girl comes out again. When I read the haters who write very aggressive things, I think how much that person hates for me to say that. Why am I bothering you so much? And I think that when one, despite everything, has a certain personal coherence, it is clearly annoying. Will the pandemic change the way we relate? There is a loss of the ability to converse, in the sense of paying your attention to things . What is more at stake is this. After each 'zoom' it is that I end up more exhausted than after the conversation with the most toxic friend I have. There is something inhuman in the 'zoom'. And in social networks? We are at the moment of the brush. Things are multi-polyhedral and have 400,000 shades. But distinguishing them also has to do with reading people and knowing human nature without believing that you never know it thoroughly. Really getting to know people is as simple as seeing how they treat cleaners, waiters, and bus drivers. How about getting Picasso 'canceled' for being 'macho'? Okay, it wasn't the best lover, not the best husband, not the best father. But I have read all the biographies that all his women have written and there is one thing that I always rescue and that is that he knew how to find talent in women. Picasso, above all else, respected talent. It made them feel that they were worth, that they had a valid look. Do you think that today's public values creators as they deserve? Above all, financially, I have always had a conflict in the monetization of things. The mainstream is great and I am the first to love Pucho, C. Tangana 'El madrileño', but it consoles me to know that there are other ways of approaching communication with the public.
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Know more
Final interview
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History Normandy, 1386: friendship, betrayal, rape and mourning to the death at the time of the Black Death
See links of interest
Work calendar
Real Madrid - UCAM Murcia
Almeria - Seville