The order I live in

Friday, 29th June, 9:30-11:00

Cinema Session and Debate: The order I live in. An indoor urban symphony

directed by Francisco Cruces & Jorge Moreno Andrés. An ethnographic film.

Session Chief: Emilio Luque (UNED)

Debate with Francisco Cruces.

Synopsis

Daniell thought he was going to have “a wife, three kids and all that”, but his life did not went this way. Toghether with the other 20 voices that compound this documentary, he pauses to reflect upon little things that give meaning to our everyday life. The silent company of objects. Loneliness. Order and disorder. The image of ourselves, reflected in mirrors. The challenge to become oneself. The place for children. Travels and moves with no way back. The family legacy, that falls down on you as an unforseen burden.

Why an indoor urban symphony?

Cities have been narrated from manifold perspectives. Scarcely from the inside.

This is an ethnograhic documentary on contemporary living in three cities: Madrid, México and Montevideo. It is a counterpoint of the classic genre of urban symphonies (with its esthetics of crowds, machines and rush in public places). Our wish is rather to tell from the inside how do we live. Twenty persons share reflections about the spaces they live in, little objects they love, things that concern them or happened to them. In every one of these micro-stories the whole life of those doing the storytelling can be glanced.

Urban poetics is, then, of a different kind. The big city does not appear as anonimous locus of commodities, industry and mass human relations. It is also a ground for personal assertion: quest, surprise, self-discovering. Something beautiful and enigmatic emerges at our homes: an order of our own. A universe.

To put in words a universe is not easy. And yet, the ethnography provides a glance of the iceberg existing below. These voices plait corally with the ambiances and objects that render them possible, commenting on uncertitudes, affects and troubles.

Intimacy can be conjugated only in the singular: in particular, in the first person. Notwithstanding this, -in times of hiperinflation of the Self and its industries- these testimonies invite to wonder to what extent the individual subject is the starring character here. Such seemingly unrepeatable stories, do they have some degree of universality? Are we, indeed, the authors of our order? Intimate life seems in the end forced by circumstances that transcend us. We will never manage to fully understand them. Modern living implies as much continuity as ruptures; as much invention as repetition; as much planning as astonishment. It pends on a very thin and breakable thread. In the context of everday life, the sense of things is undoing and redoing itself, non stop.

This film is a collective dialogue having to do with this poetic thread. Of course, we do not pretend to speak for all the city dwellers -a funny idea, when you consider the more than 30 millions inhabitants of our three cities toghether. The petty confidences of a few people does not luck relevance, though. Such is the great mistery on which this movie is built. Stories of this kind may appear singular, unrepeatable. But -precisely for that reason-, they do belong to anyone and all.

Technical data

Running time: 63 min

Format: HD

Date: 2017. Filmed in Madrid, Montevideo & México City

Directed by Jorge Moreno Andrés & Francisco Cruces

Research: Francisco Cruces, Jorge Moreno Andrés

Photography and Edition: Jorge Moreno Andrés

Music: Francisco Cruces

Sound: Alexander Melczer

Coloring: Rocío Ortiz

Master: Marco Hernández Calvo

Production assistance: Gloria G. Durán, Karina Boggio, Antonio Zirión, Nancy Flores, Valeria Cuevas, Enedina Ortega

Research assistance: Romina Colombo, Nuria Esteban

Translation: Alexander Melczer, Francisco Cruces

Subtitles: Aimée Ther


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