Play-Doc LAP
A Laboratory of Film in the Rough
by Marta Andreu
2014. This year Play-doc celebrates its tenth anniversary. And this same year, we have set ourselves the challenge of creating a new space: the LAP, a laboratory of film in the rough, a place in which to sketch out ideas in film, to search, to make notes, and to create drafts. It is a place in which one can devote time to reflecting on film while making films.Every year, four or five film-makers from Galicia will be called on to consider an issue which will provoke an investigation into documentary perspectives and into the reality considered by these perspectives. The objective: to come together and share their own personal sketching out of their thoughts for the determination of a single concept or idea, set as a challenge to the participants.
The LAP is a space in which those taking part can investigate their own artistic styles and yet also seek to create a dialogue between these styles, generating an exchange which will be reflected in them all.
In 2014, LAP #01is to focus on the idea of transformation. The seed of this idea was to be found in a poster at last year’s festival, which saw the fifth and final year of the Laboratory of the Filmed Portrait: “This story has reached its end. Thank you.” The idea that arose from this phrase was the certainty that when one story finishes, another begins, which will either continue it or will take its place. Today in Galicia, as in so many other places, reality is defined by the fact that it is ceasing to be what it was, without yet being what it will be; in other words, it is in the process of transformation. How can we capture this moment of change? How can this reality leave a record of itself?
At the same time, transformation is a key theme in cinema. The telling of a tale always speaks of a process of change; to create an image is to cause a change in form; to fix one’s gaze, to move it towards something, or away from it, involves letting oneself be touched by that which is touched when it is looked at. To transform, or to see a transformation, is to be transformed.
LAP will not only be the record not only of the reality in which we work, the quarry in which to dig out our ideas in the rough, but it will also bear witness to the experience that the very process of work involves: the record of the notes, sketches and drafts. LAP will be the repository of what is sketched out but also of the very effort to sketch these ideas out. It is intended as a space for thinking, sharing, and directing the documentary gaze both from and at Galicia. It is a space, a place, a laboratory which will constantly seek to gain real insights, to discuss and display the present which we share and the present which we will also interchange: that of reality. That of cinema. With: Ángel Santos Touza, Marcos Nine, Eloy Enciso e Otto Roca Sunday 6 at 6:30 pm. Sala 1