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<\/p>\n\uf0d8 Jos\u00e9 Alay\u00f3n produces Between Dog and Wolf, the first feature screening within Canarias Cinema: a hybrid story between reality and fantasy around three Cuban veterans of the Angolan War who continue with their annual ritual of reliving in Sierra Maestra their training as soldiers.<\/p>\n
\uf0d8 \u201cFestivals as Las Palmas de Gran Canaria\u2019s make filmmakers, it\u2019s proven. And in this case, significant recognition has been achieved within the circuit as a festival for auteur films”<\/p>\n
\uf0d8 Between Dog and Wolf screens this Friday April 9 at noon at Cinesa El Muelle\u2019s Screen 9<\/p>\n
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Thursday 8 April, 2021.- Sierra Maestra is one of Cuban Revolution\u2019s iconic enclaves: a greatly symbolic location, former shelter of guerrillas. And also a setting of priceless natural beauty, isolated from civilization. The mountain range, rather than a landscape, is another main figure of the feature film Between Dog and Wolf<\/em> <\/strong>(Irene Guti\u00e9rrez, 2020), which begins Canarias Cinema<\/strong> feature films\u2019 screenings. A title produced by Canarian Jos\u00e9 \u00c1ngel Alay\u00f3n, along with Marina Alberti and Viana Gonz\u00e1lez.\u00a0 The story fuses documentary and fiction \u201cwhich are often genres mistakenly separated\u201d, according to Alay\u00f3n himself. It portrays the adventure of three Cuban veterans of the Angolan War who continue with their annual ritual of reliving their training as soldiers.<\/p>\n The film is a jumble of reality, fantasy and film archive, effective in its mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, crude in its cinematography and efficient when getting the audience to experience a continuous journey through the mountain range. \u201cIn regards to the hybrid mix, it\u2019s something we\u2019ve liked to make since we founded the production company El Viaje\u201d, points out Alay\u00f3n. \u201cWe are very interested in working with real material but then creating from fiction. We doubt documentaries\u2019 purity: we believe it\u2019s a common mistake to separate both genres. In this film we push that to the limit\u201d.<\/p>\n The producer and director was also Irene Guti\u00e9rrez<\/strong>\u2019s classmate at Cuba\u2019s Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV). \u201cWe met there, where a group of those students started to share in similar interests\u201d, he explains. A conceptual path that questions the canon of documentaries as synonyms of absolute truth, because \u201cin the end you are making the choice of putting the camera in a certain place, you choose where to cut, editing\u2026 I doubt documentaries are, in all fairness, what is real. In their first film, the Lumi\u00e8re Brothers redid takes of people leaving the factory. Was that reality? The truth is that that trick is a mix with fiction, we like it, and we want to get the best from each genre\u201d.<\/p>\n Alay\u00f3n, who had already produced Guti\u00e9rrez in Hotel Nueva Isla<\/em> (2014), agrees that, in Between Dog and Wolf\u2019<\/strong><\/em>s case, political background couldn\u2019t help but exist. However, he stresses how \u201cwe want to film from a respectful standpoint towards what we are addressing. We take care of the characters\u2019 ethics, and we try to put ourselves in the same position as them. The feeling was that we were shooting people who risked everything for an ideal, and that, honestly, isn\u2019t very common today\u201d.<\/p>\n And when he says risking everything, the producer refers to the lives Estebita, Miguel and Alberto put on the line when going on an adventure to fight in Angola (docking, by the way, in Tenerife, in a previous stop). The filmmaker says that in Between Dog and Wolf<\/em><\/strong> \u201cwe worked based on talks with them, who should have appeared in the credits almost as screenwriter\u201d. Then, you add to that base of real facts a fictional past, some inserted shot of historical documents\u2026<\/p>\n The film has had a successful journey in these difficult times. \u201cWe started last year in Berlin, then the whole pandemic happened, but the truth is in Spain it has worked quite well. It won the Best Spanish Feature Film Award at Gij\u00f3n. And, despite being narratively complex, we think people understand it\u201d, adds Alay\u00f3n. And in the end, \u201cthe veterans are very happy about the result: now I think it\u2019s going to be released in La Habana, they are going to be there and it would be fantastic to see them again. I think the film treats them with a lot of dignity\u201d.<\/p>\n The producer has also been in charge of the film\u2019s cinematography. Here, he explains that \u201cIrene and I talked about the idea of building everything visually from their bodies, putting them against the landscape. That gets you moving and feeling like you are travelling\u201d. And, in fact, the camera goes from close, intimate and direct shots heavily focused on the character to showing the mountain range\u2019s vastness. A place barely kind to temporary visitors, but with an undeniable striking visual appeal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a great experience being in Sierra Maestra. We arrived with no clear idea of what we wanted to do, but that was also what we were looking for: that the main characters would guide us and that, in the end, the film would be the one going through you\u201d, explains the producer before admitting that \u201cwe depended on the mules there for a lot of things. We were also looking for climate changes, downpours\u2026 We stayed for two months. When it rained, the river overflew. The noise made by bugs at night, what can I say. But we really like that experience. Was our return a relief? Well, just the change from Sierra Maestra to La Habana was a shock\u201d.<\/p>\n He has a clear definition of filmmaker Irene Guti\u00e9rrez<\/strong>: \u201cShe is a force of nature. For this work, which was complicated, she was researching a lot. And she really managed to make progress with all those men while shooting a closer and intimate way\u201d. In regards to her vision as a director, Alay\u00f3n adds that \u201cHotel Nueva Isla was a quieter film, it was handled different, and this was a whirl. I don\u2019t know if we are truly definite filmmakers: in this we are all continuously evolving and learning. I think, though, that she is sure about what she doesn\u2019t have an interest in, which is more commercial or constructed cinema\u201d.<\/p>\n The Festival and Canarias Cinema<\/strong><\/p>\n Director, producer and autor, Jos\u00e9 Alay\u00f3n admits he is \u201ccompletely connected\u201d to the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival. \u201cI think it has been one of the most important things, if not the most, that has happened to filmmakers in the Canary Islands. Also because of Canarias Cinema\u2019s quality and relevance as a meeting point, with a very personal and powerful cinema. Festivals such as Las Palmas de Gran Canaria\u2019s make filmmakers, it is proven. Besides, it gives you a lot of strength, because in the end this is also a tough job, and it\u2019s nice to find people going through the same thing as you\u201d.<\/p>\n In addition, he points out that the Festival \u201cis highly recognized within the circuit, as a Festival for auteur films. And it is a good thing: festivals cannot copy what big platforms do, eventually it works backwards. If cinema doesn\u2019t reinvent themselves, it dies. And what this Festival has done is going to search for that something new to Asia, America, Europe, Africa\u2026 On the other hand, it wasn\u2019t that easy twenty years ago watching that other kind of cinema around here. The one we\u2019ve enjoyed thanks to the Festival. How is that that cinema has to be the same for everybody? I don\u2019t really believe in that, because, what is cinema for everybody?<\/p>\n Between Dog and Wolf<\/strong><\/em> is screening at noon on Friday April 9 at Cinesa El Muelle\u2019s Screen 9, and at 7:15 pm on Saturday 10 after an introduction by the authors. The event is subject to all security measures fighting the spreading of COVID-19, so masks are compulsory and social distances need to be observed at all times during screenings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \uf0d8 Jos\u00e9 Alay\u00f3n produces Between Dog and Wolf, the first feature screening within Canarias Cinema: a hybrid story between reality and fantasy around three Cuban veterans of the Angolan War who continue with their annual ritual of reliving in Sierra Maestra their training as soldiers. \uf0d8 \u201cFestivals as Las Palmas de Gran Canaria\u2019s make filmmakers, it\u2019s proven. And in this …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":16947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[401],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lpafilmfestival.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}