Oskar Alegria Uses Old Technology to Tell a New Story in Zinzindurrunkarratz

 
Last century’s technology becomes a thing of the present in Oskar Alegria’s Zinzindurrunkarratz. In his last film, Zumiriki, a documentary in which he recorded his experiences living in a self-made cabin over a number of months, he employed Super 8 footage shot by his father. In the new work, he goes farther with that ancient tech. As he and a donkey named Paolo journey through the Basque countryside along an old drover’s road to deliver supplies to a shepherd, he records the trek with his dad’s old camera, its first use in decades.

The Super 8 camera is a sound model. The film Alegria’s father used had a magnetic stripe running down the edge of the frames to capture audio. Super 8 cartridges are still manufactured but only as silent film. Creativity would be required in Alegria’s approach to sound in this new endeavor.

This is the director’s third feature to screen at SFFILM Festival. His debut feature, The Search for Emak Bakia, was part of the 2012 festival. Zumiriki was actually selected twice for inclusion. It was meant to be part of the 2020 festival. After the COVID lockdown of that year forced the festival’s cancellation, Zumiriki screened in 2021’s online festival as part of the 2020 Festival Flashback.

We recently caught up with Alegria over email to chat about this latest film, working with an analog camera, and his approach to sound when faced with technical limitations. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q&A Interview

Q: In Zumiriki, you used some of your father’s Super 8 footage. In Zinzindurrunkarratz, you employ more of your dad’s images but also shoot the film with his camera. Were you already thinking ahead to this film while you were working on Zumiriki or did this come from a different impulse?

Oskar Alegria: Good question, it seems that you are in my mind, I thought and rethought all of that… I had a first idea of ​​filming Zumiriki with that Super 8 camera, which would have made it a greater survival exercise in that isolation in the forest… but I also thought that it would be good for the film [if the camera could] be charged by the sun (with the solar panels for the camera batteries), developed by the moon (with a pinhole photo that I take in the same cabin as a camera obscura and the light of the moon makes it arise), and that the trees were also filmmakers, by placing the camera in them and rolling with their wind, which gives it a human sway… In short, it was left pending to use my father’s Super8. For this film, it was like a call — continue shooting with that same camera but starting from its last image and completing the last frame that was interrupted.

Q: Talk about working with Super 8 and its mysteries. As you point out in the film, it is not like video or digital recording where you can see what kind of images you’re getting. You not only don’t know what you’re getting, you can’t be sure you’re capturing any pictures at all until the film is processed. Can you describe that element of anticipation and surprise when the footage comes back from the lab and you see it for the first time?

Oskar Alegria: It has been an exercise full of magic and I would say meaning… as you say, filming today with the help of a screen that allows you to review what you shot is having the present and even the future tied up too much… you know what you have filmed and you can review it again and again. But filming blind or in the dark first makes you have more aim, you have to refine a lot and not repeat, and it allows you to see the filming in another time more linked to the past or to a verbal tense that I believe is that of the film, that of the remembered present.

Q: Each cartridge is 3 minutes, 20 seconds long. You had two expired cartridges left over by your father. How many more did you use?

Oskar Alegria: I made a calculation based on my small budget, I think that these films are more artisanal than large production and I am the one who financed and worked on the film. So, I was able to buy about 25 coils… some for the introduction and initial tests and then I had about three per day on the road. That’s enough for an average of almost 10 minutes of film a day, with very tight shots, no more. That makes you refine the filming even more. It’s like the donkey, Paolo, my great companion. Donkeys eat very little, about eight times a day, and the best they can find on the road, unlike the horse that gets a big belly and for that reason gets sicker than the donkey. In my case, filming was the same exercise in containment or frugality. I could only roll eight times but the best of the way. Do not waste as is done now with digital.

Q: There is so much about memory in the film. The old Super 8 footage, the attention paid to the old way of doing things, and observation of a disappearing way of life (all of those shepherds reduced to one). In a way, the film is a memory itself, a new one built on the old ones. You’re also recreating the past through your walking journey with Paolo at your side. Is film and this film, in particular, a way of preserving a world and way of life before it completely disappears?

Oskar Alegria: Not only this film, my other films have revolved around that circle as well, trying to catch the last breath or revive something that is about to disappear. For example, that is seen in the titles. The names of my films always reflect what for me is the most important mission, that a Basque expression or word that is falling out of use comes to the fore and gains strength again. I think I make films just for that, to rescue a lost word.

Q: Can you talk about your films as a way of celebrating Basque language and culture?

Oskar Alegria: Absolutely, my parents’ town was one of the last places where everyone spoke Basque a century ago. Now children and young people have recovered it, but there were generations that lost it. It is the place where in my childhood I heard that language spoken for the first time, but only from the two last speakers… who met every day at 12 at the river, each one on a bank, and spoke to each other in a language that seemed mysterious, but it was also a language that flew through the air and crossed the river through the air… like something magical and secret.

Q: Since sound film is no longer manufactured, you had to get creative with your audio in keeping with the limitations of the technology. You’ve designed this in the way the Japanese repair pottery, showing “the cracks” by keeping images and sound mostly separate. Talk about finding that inspiration and on designing your soundscape. How much was planned in advance, based on sounds you knew you wanted, and how much was left to happenstance?

Oskar Alegria: That’s right, when I recovered my father’s camera, which had not been used for 41 years and had been stored in a closet, I felt that call: If it works, you should make a film with this same camera as an archeology exercise. The first miracle was discovering that it worked. And the second was to discover that reels with sound are no longer manufactured, so we had to shoot with silence as the protagonist. I believe that all accidents, wounds, or scars have a lot to say. As in that Japanese art of fixing what is broken with gold glue, here there was also a possibility of working with silent images that the sound of gold could sew and join together, but always with that honesty of showing the second life of things. Not fixing it perfectly, but rather the camera continued giving its beautiful imperfection. The silent, the meaningful, is also very virtuous and perhaps the best way to show certain corners of the soul, such as ruins or lost gestures.

Q: Film is such a tactile medium, but how far did you go with that?. Was this edited digitally or were there razor blades and tape involved in putting the sections together?

Oskar Alegria: It has to do with the above. When one sense disappears, there is another that develops more and takes its place… that’s why when filming silent images and uniting them through blind sounds, I realized another sense little treated in cinema, touch. When we do not see and we do not hear, it is the hand that guides us through the dark. And this is a film that recovers a path into the fog and that is where it is felt by touch. It is not a path made with the feet, I realized that when rolling my hand is very present, like an extension of the body to be able to touch and feel the landscape and its treasures.

Q: SFFILM has screened all three of your features. Can you describe your relationship with the organization and what you are looking forward to the most on your upcoming visit?

Oskar Alegria: It is a pleasure and a great honor to repeat a place like San Francisco. The great Paolo comes to mind again, the memory of donkeys works like this, they always return to the place where they were treated well, they always return to the place where they were given love and good food. For me, San Francisco and its festival is a similar place, more than a house, a good stable… and this is a great compliment.

Zinzindurrunkarratz screens 5:45 PM, Friday, April 26, at the Marina Theatre and 11:30 AM, Saturday, April 27, at BAMPFA.

About the Author

Pam Grady is a freelance writer, whose work appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, 48 Hills, and other publications. She also has her own web site.

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