Spanish director Alejandro Vázquez San Miguel comes from a background steeped in cinema. His family has had a furniture and props rental company for more than 120 years, first for theatre, then for cinema. His grandfather has worked in the film business since he was 12 years – and is now 95. The director compares him to “those humble workers who help to make films but are always anonymous.” Whether Samuel Bronston epics or Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, the grandfather was involved in them in one way or another.
When Alejandro was growing up, he was delighted by his grandfather’s warehouse which he calls his “childhood playground.” He used to play there among the swords, chairs, cabinets and other furniture and props from those films from a long time long ago.
In his new documentary A Landscaped Area Too Quiet For Me, the director recalls how, a few years ago, when his grandmother was 88 and close to death, she asked for his help. She began to take notes and to work on a memoir. “At that moment, I decided to film her.”
Alejandro went into his grandparents’ home with his camera. The footage that he shot forms the basis of his film (which screens in the International Competition at DocLisboa). “My grandfather and my grandmother are my great inspiration in life, so in cinema as well,” he says of his subjects.
One might imagine it would be challenging to make a film about his grandparents when they were so old and frail. This wasn’t the case at all. “It was simple and beautiful because they are close and welcoming people. They loved forming this new “family” with the small film crew (there were only three of us), they adopted them as their own grandchildren. We filmed, ate together, drank coffee and filmed again, and it made their lives happy, they were delighted and had fun. It was a beautiful way to film.”
The grandparents relished being filmed. For the grandfather, it was a reminder of his old way of life. He wanted to assist in any way he could. His grandmother, meanwhile, was delighted to be able to chat to younger people. She didn’t let the crew get in her way but simply incorporated them in her everyday life, as if they were part of her routine.
“They love me and I love them, we have always been very close, I was born in their house, they raised me, so I guess that allowed for a very high level of complicity and intimacy,” Alejandro notes.
He shot relatively sparingly. He ended up with around 20 hours of footage. “But we shared a lot of time together, we had breakfast, lunch, snacks, etc…, and all this helped the film in a fundamental way. My grandparents took the film as a game and, at the same time, as sharing a project with friends. They have always liked youth, they are sincere people (I still speak in the present tense, I can’t help it) and they took advantage of the camera to express themselves as adults, because at that age, they are often relegated to the role of loving grandparents…”
The style of A Landscaped Area… was determined by the apartment in which the grandparents lived. This was a tight, confined area but the director was still able to find plenty of visual possibilities. “I knew the space and the light coming into it very well, so I planned to follow the light throughout the day. Little by little I found a language as the days and actions went by. The sequences were created by days, Mondays, Tuesdays… and we tried to follow the vital rhythm of my grandparents.”
The documentary was made before the pandemic. Putting it together has been slow, painstaking work. Covid, the director suggests, added an extra year to the editing process. He pays tribute to his editor Marta Velasco for her help in “stripping down the structure so that the air could emerge.”
And, yes, Alejandro has kept his grandmother’s notebook. In her writing, she touches own her experiences during very turbulent periods in Spanish 20th Century history.
“It is incredible the life they have had, it fills me with pride and admiration, for me they are undoubtedly a mirror in which to look at myself every day, but not only for their past, but for how they carry that past in the present.”
Alejandro doesn’t know yet what will become of the film. He is just delighted to be able to show it in Lisbon. “The process has been so long and difficult that right now I am focused on enjoying the fact that Doclisboa wanted to programme it, it’s wonderful. For a long time I didn’t know what to do with it, it is a delicate film with a length that is not very usual or commercial and that scared me, I didn’t know if it would find its space. I hope that from now on it can find its way.”
As for future projects, they may have to wait – but not for too long. After all, cinema is the family business. “Right now, I’m recovering economically in a paid job to be able to return to a “normal” life, pay the rent, etc…, there’s no other choice. I imagine that as soon as I save a little, I’ll be back to my old ways…”
