2003 MONT DE MARSAN FLAMENCO ART FESTIVAL

Ocher and Blue

Candela Olivo. Mont de Marsan (France), July 4th, 2003

Premiere of the documentary film 'Por Oriente sale el sol' ('The Sun Rises in the East') by Fernando González-Caballos. 'Alma Vieja' ('Old Soul'): Farruquito with Farruco, El Barullo, El Polito, Pilar la Faraona, Adela Campallo and La Hachará on baile; Ramón Vicenti and El Perla on guitar; José Valencia, Jorge el Canastero, María Vizárraga and La Tana on cante; Manuel Molina as guest artist. Cinéma Le Royal. Espace François Mitterrand. Mont de Marsan (France), July 4th, 2003. 6 p.m., 9 p.m.

"Bring me some stew from Jerez!". La Paquera de Jerez is on the set of Channel 9 in Japan waiting to be interviewed and "to sing a little through bulerías". The attitude of the Jerez-born cantaora - vital, natural, strong - causes something between bewilderment and liking in the Japanese TV station's staff - cold, technological -. Jerez versus Tokyo. Tradition versus modernity. Such a contrast is the axis upon which revolves 'Por Oriente sale el sol', a documentary film by Fernando González-Caballos whose world premiere has been welcomed by the 2003 Mont de Marsan Festival. "The project got started with an interview which manager Manuel Pulpón proposed to me and which I turned by chance into a road movie about La Paquera's first trip to Japan", explains the Sevillian anthropologist. Flamenco is approached in this audiovisual work - co-produced by Maestranza Films, Flamenco Libre and DMVB Films - "from a contemporary viewpoint, through the personal experience of an artist who has lived different eras, going from Jerez, which represents tradition as the starting point, to Tokyo, a reference of modernity".

	Fernando González-Caballos and Ivan Schreck (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

The director has been accompanied in this adventure, which has features of heroic exploits in the background, by Ivan Schreck, author of other works related to flamenco such as the video 'La Metamorfosis' ('The Metamorphosis') by Israel Galván. The filmmaker and film's photography director, also the creator of the promotional videos for Eva Yerbabuena and Javier Barón, comments that he has tried to give the film "the freshest look possible, to have a natural picture of La Paquera, something which the DV format allows, which is light and enables you to capture movement, with everything recorded by the camera on your shoulder". The result is "a fluent story, with a road movie style, which always revolves around the star". The filmmaker - the second cameraman of 'Polígono Sur' under the direction of his master Jean Yves Escoffier - stresses the intentionality of color in the film: "I wanted to make a great contrast. Japan is always bluish, which represents coldness. Jerez, however, is presented with warmth, with yellow tones like those of Polaroid in the seventies".

Besides the anthropological aim of confronting cultures, 'Por Oriente sale el sol' manages to uncover the beloved other side of that great cante figure, already very close to being a legend, by the name of La Paquera de Jerez. The camera lets the tour speak for itself, so spectators end up feeling like a privileged voyeur at the warm-ups in the dressing room, in that car whose chauffeur cannot find the theater's entrance, at that table at the Japanese tablao she goes to... And which, of course, has a great laugh as an accomplice in more than one scene. It has several members of the troupe that accompanies her as co-narrators and active ingredients in the different relationships between ocher and blue: guitarist Parrilla de Jerez, her faithful show partner and a man with the door half-open to modernity; her brother, a biographical narrator and fishmonger by occupation at the main market in Jerez, with a closed attitude towards what Tokyo represents; and her nephew, a débuting palmero, completely open to the giant screens and neon lights. "Ali, ali, ali, ali... aaaaanda". It remains to be seen if La Paquera will again respond to the call of Yoko Komatsubara's pocketbook. "It depends on how my body holds up", she already told journalist Daniel Gil in a report which Flamenco-world.com published on the trip. The testimony is already there, ready to travel to festivals, television stations and maybe cinemas, for the enjoyment of not only flamenco enthusiasts and fans of La Paquera, but also of all those interested in discovering the different social and cultural realities which coexist at the dawn of the third millennium.

By the way, the festival's fifth day welcomed a second premiere, that of 'Alma Vieja', the new show by Farruquito. With the exaltation of the figure of the young Sevillian bailaor as a leitmotif, the show - a nearly one hundred percent family affair - is recreated at length in the baile with the Farruco trademark, performed by the now head of the clan and the pack of children who succeed him. Judging by the collective uproar which could be heard from outside, it was liked.

magazine@flamenco-world.com