- Could you tell us about the background of the film project ? How did it start ?
The text and idea were mine. The idea came from a very simple act; the fact that anyone can cross the Chilean presidential House, La Moneda, as a tourist, from the Constitucion Square to the Ciudadania Square. But we can never cross it in the other direction, we can´t go out from the entrance door. For me this is a symbol of the idea that we can´t return in history, that we would only be able to see forward, that we would have to forget everything. It can´t be like that. Therefore the character in my film crosses in the opposite, the forbidden direction.
- Why was it important for you to make this film? Is it based on your personal experiences during and after the dictatorship?
This film was important for me because I think that people in Chile need to forget the recent past, the dictatorship, they need to forget History. They don't want to see what happens everyday, to see ourselves as inhabitants of the same city and the same History in Chile.
Contemporary Art has a great virtue, which really interests me, the possibility of asking it self and who watches a film as a little ant which can go further than the others. For me it's important to talk
about the past, to talk about history, to constantly create and recreate a new history. We can't go further and we can't excuse ourselves denying the past. The story in my film, in this man, is individual, personal but also universal. Each one of us can see something in it, each one of us can get something out of it.
- How did you produce the film? Was it difficult to get permission from the authorities? And
why do you use this very poetic but also quite abstract text for the voiceover, without giving more specific information about the site and history of what we see and hear?
Negociations for permissions were always friendly but they took a lot of time and it cost 8 months to have the autorisation to film in La Moneda. We got it finally just one day before filming. I decided working with voice-over because its something in film language that I like a lot. It’s a kind of exercise that we practice when we walk in a city. We look around and hear an internal voice, or we have earphones and we listen to some music, and so our image of cities and worlds change... I love cities, I love watching how they act and move, and the kindest way to see a city is walking. Also I consider walking my ‘office’ because it’s the only time I can spend alone... That's what interested me in the film, an internal voice, walking continually in a city, no cuttings, a real walk...
You ask me why my text is abstract... I like imagined places, the places of memory, the communal places. Chilean history has been narrated in millions of ways, a lot of filmmakers talk about it. I don't talk just about Chile, I talk about things that are not there... I talk about the people that read this interview, I talk about a collective memory... a place without memory is a mute place.
The cinema has a virtue... we turn off the lights and we can dream... as soon as we turn these lights on again we have a lot of questions... we can find these questions in the story.
We live in a connected world that instantaneously can give us almost all the information we want. This is exactly what I don't want in my film, I want questions.
- How was your film received in your country? Have many people in Chile seen it?
The film has not yet been shown in Chile. It will be in July for an exhibition that I'll create for the Gabriela Mistral Gallery, which is located just beside La Moneda. Some friends and the crew who worked on the film have seen it and they liked a lot, but of course I’m curious to find out what people in Chile will think about it. It was made in Chile, in Santiago, thinking of everyone that lives there and every person that passes La Moneda every day and tries not to think about what happened there thirty years ago. (La Moneda was destroyed by the military and occupied by the dictatorship. It's a symbol of this and also of the new democracy).
In what way do other filmmakers inspire you?
I'm not a cinephile, I don’t even regard myself as a fillmaker. Walking really inspires me….I really like walking, my inspiration stems from the things we see every day. But there are some filmmakers that I like a lot, such as Terrence Malick, Raul Ruíz, Theo Angeloupoulos and Wim Wenders.
- Could you please tell us something about your future projects ?
I'm working on a video installation about immigration, especially immigrants in France, where I live at the moment. I'm also writing two films. One of them is about my mother and her vision of life and the other is about Paris.