Sabrina Farji
Eva y Lola
The director of “Cielo azul, cielo negro” and “Cuando ella saltó” tells us about the filmmaking process of her third film starring Celeste Cid and Emme Vitale.
22 de febrero
This film, starring Celeste Cid and Emme Vitale, tells the story of a young girl, who was the daughter of a disappeared man, who during Christmas Time and New Year´s Day learns that Lola, her friend and mate from a special cabaret punk circus is an abducted daughter. Therefore, Eva will help her friend to choose between finding out the truth, or believing a lie.
The cast is made up of actors such as Jorge D´Elía, Victoria Carreras, Willy Lemos, Juan Minujín, Claudia Lapacó and Alejandro Awada.. This is the third film by Sabrina Farji who directed Cielo azul, cielo negro(jointly with Paula de Luque) and Cuando ella saltó. The film is expected to be released on May 13,2010.
Eva y Lola´s initiative has been in my mind for many years. I teach a scriptwriting course at the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, and in 2004 I attended a workshop taught by Victoria Grigera, whose father disappeared during the last military dictatorship.
She told me the story of a girl, who was the daughter of missing parents, who struck up a friendship with another girl who had been abducted during the dictatorship and helped her find her true identity.
And the truth is that from a dramatic viewpoint, the story was definitely redundant. Yet, she told me it was true, and so I met her friend Victoria Donda, and I thought it would be interesting to begin filming a story revolving around such ideas.
We started out to work on the script and decided to undertake this initiative together. I had wanted to make a film tackling the issue of restitution for a long time. Back in 1992 I directed the video art film entitled “Unas mujeres”, which received countless awards, and it was in this film where I touched on one of the first cases of children being returned to their own families. Since then, I have not been able to think up a way to take up something new. To my mind, this issue had to be tackled differently.
Therefore, when I established contact with Victoria Grigera, I became very fond of the way she carries herself in life and addresses her own past experiences with a view showing a great deal of black humour, which is an attitude I would not have allowed myself to adopt before. Anyway, I told myself if she was able to act like that, everybody would be able to do so, as well.
To some extent, this initiative sort of turned to me so that it would be developed. And I certainly believe when that happens, one has to be on alert and take the lead.
I am very glad about the film we made with Emme and Celeste Cid, its two leading actresses. We had a large number of talks with grandchildren who had been returned to their own families and some of them even attended the shooting time. As regards Emme ´s grandfather, he is still missing. As a result, we also talked extensively about this issue and we worked hard on the emotional viewpoint, on what “getting your family back” actually means.
I had always wanted to work with both of them. In fact, I had called Emme to work in my first film but, we could not finally agree on our timing availability. And I wanted Celeste to perform this role. As regards their roles, I needed the actresses to have a strong physical connection. I needed everybody to believe they were friends right from the start. As a result, it was necessary for them to have chemistry, and share a past of their own. Therefore, their first scene takes place in a changing room while holding a customary conversation among dancers. And they are friends and wanted to work together. Everything happened naturally. Both of them are singers and dancers and are strongly committed to this issue. As regards Celeste, she had acted in “Teatro y Televisión por la Identidad”, and she cares a great deal about this issue. And so does Emme, since she also has her own personal story behind. As to both of them, they were certainly devoted to this film.
The first title thought of for this film would be Años luz and this essence entirely prevailed during shooting time. I wanted to make a bright film where even if a death and grief past story coexists, its characters hold on to life. Life is bright and grandchildren are full of life, despite everything. We have always laughed with them and there is a desire to hold onto life and enjoy, in spite of gloomy times. The film had to show that light and such colours having to do with the grandchildren´s youth.
The scene at Parque de la Memoria could have been shot on a rainy day. Anyhow, we decided to shoot it when the weather was beautiful and sunny. It is the film´s bright time when Eva tells Emme: “here is your Dad”. At that moment Emme becomes humanized as she had been really tough and absolutely inscrutable up until then. As regards this moment, it is certainly a turning point in this story as the character gets back her own identity and becomes humanized. Actually, she had she had been keeping herself to herself up to that time and all of a sudden she comes out to life.
The idea of both these characters being related through dancing has to do with my own personal universe and with an intention to unleash a reaction since a musical and human rights do not seem to go hand in hand. Nevertheless, all musicals such as Cabaret, Chicago, All That Jazz are imbued with a very tough plot.
With this film I want to create contrast, and noise and open up a debate. I do not want it to pass unnoticed. It is a film about friendship and love, seen from a very human standpoint. In fact, I meant it to be an opportunity for the issue of missing children to be addressed and therefore be in a position to come up with a debate, which might as well serve other purposes. I do hope this film may go beyond the achievement of its success while being shown at the cinema. Furthermore, I hope it may achieve popularity at a countrywide level and pave the way for opening up a debate.
