Pedro Gonzalez Rubio

Winner of the prestigious Tiger Award at Rotterdam Int’l Film Festival and an audience favorite everywhere it has been since it began it’s world film festival run starting at TIFF last year, for this month’s IONCINEPHILE we present Pedro González-Rubio and his feature film debut, Alamar. Film Movement are releasing this tale about the bonding of a father and son set in the splendor of nature starting this Wednesday at the Film Forum in New York.

González-Rubio is a Mexican filmmaker born in Brussels who at the age of 16 studied visual arts in New Delhi. He studied media in Mexico before attending the London Film School and from there he worked as a cinematographer on Eva Norvind’s BORN WITHOUT (2007). His directorial debut, TORO NEGRO (2005, co-director), received several awards including the Horizontes Award for best Latin American film from the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Eric Lavallee: During your childhood…what films were important to you?
Pedro González Rubio: I remember growing up with a film made by my grandfather about a boy who learns to play the violin, he did “Yanco” in 1960 and against all odds he was able to finish this film. This is probably one of the milestones from independent mexican cinema of the 60s. My mother had a video copy of Lamorisse “Le Balloon Rouge” which she played to me very often. I loooved Peter Pan too.

Lavallee: During your formative years what films and filmmakers inspired you? And at what point did you know you wanted to become a filmmaker?
The film that influenced me the most to choose this career was Cinema Paradiso, I saw it with my mother in an old art deco cinema called Bella Época. I must have been around 12 years old. I could feel very close with the characters emotions towards the magic of movies, so when we walked out of the thatre I remember telling my mother I was going to make films. Then at film school I discovered Godard and Truffaut, their energetic film style inspired me to break with the canons that I was learning at that same time. I mean, at school I learned the basics of filmmaking, I specialized in photography and this gave me the opportunity to know all the departments of cinematography, from electrician and rigging to focus puller all the way to director of photography. The films by Herzog where groundbreaking, one that I loved was Fitzcarraldo. They portrayed the difficulties of the creative process as well as the miracles that happen beyond our control of the elements. This I clearly learnt it from Herzog’s films and made me discover another aspect of filmmaking. The social drama portrayed in my first work TORO NEGRO, co-directed with Carlos Armella, came from British films we saw during our school years in London. The works of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke where surely an influence. We took the dramatic structures found in their films to create the focus of our story in TORO NEGRO.

Lavallee: Is the bond/rapport between father and son something that you wanted to explore beforehand? And do you think that curiosity exists because it is something you yearn for or something you identify with strongly?
The family relationships have been center themes in both ALAMAR and TORO NEGRO. In ALAMAR I felt the need to tell the story from an opposite perspective of parent/sibling relationship, I was thinking of this project as the duality with the first one. I was yearning to explore a story about a very simple and primitive activity in the nurturing of a child, because I felt my previous film explored the incapacity of teaching since the characters are stuck in a solitary self destructive loop. In ALAMAR I wanted to have a timeless relationship and love between family, this could be achieved by focusing on the initiation of a boy with his father’s roots.

Lavallee: A “which came first” question: did you go in knowing you would film with the coral reef backdrop or did your meeting with Jorge and Natan set the pathway of the story?
I was interested in exploring the impermanence of things. So by choosing to film in such a fragile environment and then doing it from a child’s point of view would give that idea of impermanence a strong notion. The image of this coral reef came first by witnessing how the coast in the Mexican Caribbean is being invaded by urban/touristic developments, destroying everything in its path, from the lifestyle of the fishermen to the ecosystem of the zone. Playa del Carmen used to be similar to the location of the film, now we have no mangrove there, instead there are beach clubs, bars and hotels to bring the commodities of the city for the comfort of the tourists.

Lavallee: Your decision to shoot on video was purely an economic one, I was wondering what ideas did you have for the style of the film? What inspirations (other films, location, paintings etc…) did you draw upon for the look/style of the film?
I couldn’t visualize this film with a big crew, it had to be done in a very intimate way and doing it with the spirit of my previous documentary projects: shooting it myself with a sound recordist and a camera operator joining us for the underwater scenes. Some of the films that have inspired me in some way in relation to Alamar would be Waiting for Happiness, Forsaken Land, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Silent Light, The White Diamond. But I was also inspired by Kerouac’s sense of live to tell and Hemingway’s ode to the relation of man and sea.

Lavallee: Since last year’s TIFF, you’ve been traveling the world film festival circuit, pretty much collecting/receiving awards/prizes, with so much time between – I imagine that there are some ideas that are circulating in your head… I was wondering if your next film will still incorporate a docu–realist aesthetic and tone.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the next project, I really appreciate the freedom and non preconception approach we had in Alamar. Also I’ll try to go to the very essence of a relationship, this makes the story universal even if I decide to shoot in a remote place or the basement of an apartment.

Lavallee: Mantarraya Producciones – (they’ve become a major importer of auteur cinema from Mexico) – I was wondering how did they come onboard and if there is any key advice you picked up from Carlos?
I was photographing a documentary for Mantarraya Producciones and that is how the director introduced me to Jaime Romandía, who has produced Reygadas and Escalante’s films. I had already shot my film and was in the editing process when Jaime saw a very rough cut. We agreed very quickly on the collaboration I needed from Mantarraya and so I was able to finish the film properly, with the ideal post production process for a data to film. Mantarraya’s reputation in the international scene and Jaime’s talent to find the best life for a film also helped Alamar premiere at Toronto with a major foreign films sales agency (Mk2) already onboard. The key advice I got from Carlos has been in relation to editing, to be as honest as possible in a scene one has to achieve the least cuts and be patient with the action portrayed.

Lavallee: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with Manuel Carranza?
Manuel Carranza is a close friend from my life in Playa del Carmen. We share the same love for nature and he is an unconditional collaborator with my work. Even though in previous projects he was participating as line producer, here he did many tasks (sound, line producer, assistant director, etc…) Our friendship and mutual understanding is a key role for the creative process during the shooting, since most of the time it was only the two of us behind the scenes.

Lavallee: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with the underwater photographers?
Alexis Zabé and David Torres Castilla are key collaborators for adding that dive into the water and capture the aquatic scenes in the coral reef with such beauty. They were very generous with us, adapting their skills to our very low budget film. We would discuss the actions the camera would have to follow, then Matraca would look for a place in the reef where we could find lobsters and then they would scuba dive to setup the shot and so Jorge and Matraca would do very specific actions to get the shot right. The underwater scenes were the most planned because communication underwater is through sign language, we are much slower also with our movements and we cannot be in that environment for a long time. Definitely David and Alexis technical control for fiction made this moments achievable.

Lavallee: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with Jose Luis Fermandez Tolhurst?
Jose Luis was the editing consultant for Alamar. He was a key collaborator for the final cut of the film, his participation was the first one to come on board when I signed with Mantarraya. I had done all the editing myself at home and so I reached a point where I was no longer very objective. My only feedback throughout the year of editing was my girlfriend’s, who is a scientist and was able to give me very useful advice on the common sense of the story. But then came Jose Luis to give the final touches, he comes from an Australian film education and was impressed by the way was is able to discover details that made a big difference in the final cut of the film. We had long conversations on the narrative before actually cutting or adding things, the deadline for Toronto was very near so we worked extensively for about a week and we added a crucial scene in Alamar, which Jose Luis rescued from the underwater shots folder: the boy and his father snorkeling together and then the father letting his son to do it by himself.

Film Movement releases Pedro González Rubio’s Alamar at the Film Forum on Wednesday.