Cerrar los ojos

Víctor Erice’s CERRAR LOS OJOS is a unique film in the contemporary landscape, a film that bears witness and gives a renewed chance to the many things currently disappearing, across many levels: cinema theatres and projection, ties between fathers and daughters, national history and personal memory, books annotated with dedications, the identities which hinge on a photograph, almost forgotten Sephardic songs; this is Erice’s stand against oblivion and compliance. Retired filmmaker Miguel Garay is forced to confront his past after participating in a TV show about Julio Arenas—an actor and a friend of Garay’s who vanished 22 years ago while shooting the director’s unfinished film. Stylistically, CERRAR LOS OJOS is more modest than Erice’s previous features, but its narrative structure is unparalleled in its complexity and modernism. It includes two interrelated time periods, a film within a film, a dialogue between old masters of the cinematic tradition and new forms of TV reportage and a breathtaking reflection on the gaze. Replete with mysteries, detours, hypotheses and revelations, CERRAR LOS OJOS reminds us that the power of cinema resides not only in the films we watch, but also in the films that watch us. (Cristina Álvarez López)

Víctor Erice: LOS DESAFÍOS (1969, KO- REGIE), EL ESPÍRITU DE LA COLMENA (1973), EL SUR (1983), EL SOL DEL MEMBRILLO (1992), ALUMBRAMIENTO (2002, K),