Eight years ago, we took a major decision, namely, that a better understanding of the art of cinema in all its historical, geographical and aesthetic diversity would also help us to get a deeper understanding of our own context. The goal was clear: to explore the key themes of our singularity, keenly aware that nothing about who we are is ever truly unique or exclusive. We wanted to learn about the place where we live through the gaze that filmmakers from around the world cast on their own individual environments, countries and realities.
Lanzarote is not just an island with volcanoes, nor is it the only place whose economy was once based on salt. It is not the only territory where the life of its people and the landscape were shaped by the wind or fishing. Nor are we the only place suffering from deep and painful crises. The subject matters of previous editions of this section.
What the films from all corners of the world screened in this section always reminds us is that we are unique because we resemble other places or, in other words, that we are singular because we can find similarities and differences with territories hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.
On this occasion, the chosen subject matter for careful and in-depth analysis is none other than water. The history of cinema is full of water, whether in the form of mist, rain, clouds, fog, rivers, waterfalls, cascades, snow, ice, puddles, lakes, dams, fountains, streams… But, at the same time, the history of cinema is full of the scarcity of water: droughts, deserts, dry wells, wars, rationing.
Just like in the history of humanity, water and the lack of it is a constant in the history of cinema. And if anything characterizes Lanzarote, its people and its culture, it is precisely water. Watching these films from other times and other places, we can come to understand a little better who we are and also who we may become.
