SYNOPSIS
FIRST PERSON
I started shooting this movie when I realized I was going to loose
my mother in my arms. From that moment, my perception of the world
changed dramatically: the relationship with my family, with my girlfriend
and the rest of social relationships never were the same. I needed
to research my family's past, rethink my present and look to the future
in a different way. My frame of mind was suspended. My life was in
a pause that can only be known by the dead.
THIRD PERSON
Filmmaker Samuel Sebastian travels to Seville to visit his mother,
the artist Ester Rodríguez - Ro, who is gravely ill with cancer. Together,
they recall the lives of both and reflect about life and death. At
the same time, Samuel Sebastian covers his family memories, piecing
the puzzle of a past that he has failed to understand completely.
INFORMATION
THE FRAME OF THE DEAD
by MIREIA GONZÁLEZ TORRIJOS,
journalist
What happens when we lose a loved one? The road we travel is so dark
that once we raise our head again we do not want to remember it. The
emptiness, the sense of betrayal that we feel ... betrayal of life
to continue as if nothing had happened when in fact we become mere
automatons who are pretending to live only by inertia. We are the shadows
on a cloudy day of our true self because one of the pillars that holds
us is gone. How can we return to what we were? We can't. We can't go
back. But we can go forward.
Samuel Sebastian shows us the dark path he traveled during and after
the death of his mother, Ester Rodríguez-Ro, painter, in an outpouring
of affection and nostalgia. Divided into two parts that run in parallel,
the filmmaker takes us through his memories and roots while showing
us her last conversations with his mother. The film is full of little
details of the daily life and they become so present after the void
that leaves a loved one who passes: the sounds of the house like a
washing machine or a clock, ... He gives us tour of Valencia, the city
that has seen him grow, and leaves us a sour taste by the completely
empty spaces we find.
The clearest division, visually speaking, is the chromatic one. The
color is only present in his memories and scenes with his mother, the
rest is is in black and white. The way to accept the absence, the black
and white part, is the most beautiful part of the film. And perhaps
it's the most beautiful because of the nostalgia that Samuel Sebastian
gives to them.
The slow pace of the film, as its name suggests, helps us to be witnesses
of this familiar journey. We try to avoid it but it is necessary to
do in order to close the cycle, the stage and continue living. Because
after that, all that people always will be with us, in our factions
that are theirs, in our eyes that memorized them, in our hands that
touched them and in our memories that will perpetuate them forever.
LATEST
WORDS
Making the frame of the dead took more than four years in which has
been a lot of scripts, editings and discarded material. In addition,
there has been a personal evolution and an obsession to express deep
emotions in every sequence. It is more or less easy to transmit them
when you are facing the abyss of death, because its attractive - repulsive
form makes that you want to blindfold but at the same time you don't
want to stop watching it, and it's even harder when you open your past
and uncover the miseries of your life.
The frame of the dead is a documentary in which art plays
a fundamental role: the eternal and imperdurable art, is opposed to
the ephemeral, the representation of life to a non-existent audience.
It is true that we make art and enjoy it in order to forget the brevity
of our existence, but it is also true that only through him we can
think lucidly about life.