Pilar Monsell

"Caracremada" ("Burnface" in Catalan), a nickname given by the Spanish Civil Guard to Ramon Vila Capdevila, reflects about the libertarian resistance against Franco's regime through the last active guerrilla fighter. In 1951 the CNT ordered the retreat of its militants; however Ramon Vila remained in the woods of inland Catalonia where he restarted the fight operating on his own.

A musical, and also a reflection on watching, on trying to escape an anthropocentric gaze and also on watching itself in cinema. Featuring mares and horses: Triana, Víctor K, Bambi Sailor, San Special Solano, Buck Red Skin, Onkaia, Cool Boy, the donkey Agostino, the mule Guapa. And also Alfredo Lagos, Raül Refree, María Marín, Pepe Habichuela, Virgina García del Pino, María García Ruiz, Pilar Monsell, María Pérez Sanz.

Dos Islas is a poetic story about old age, family and the bond between a granddaughter and a grandmother. The woman, who just turned 102, tells stories about her past and childhood. In a literary and visual way she describes the most minute details. The film dazzles the viewer with love and optimism, the time passes slowly between the two islands, which might be real people, real places or the products of the main character’s imagination.

Province of Ciudad Real, Spain, December 29, 1990. During the annual march to the Herrera de la Mancha prison, held in support of the members of the terrorist gang ETA imprisoned there, the Basque rock band Negu Gorriak holds a concert, which is recorded, edited on video and turned into a tool of vindication. Decades later, a film crew tries to elaborate a personal essay around this event and its meaning.

'Ellas' will go through fifty years of the history of transsexuality through the story of five women of different generations united by common moments. In the documentary, the unpublished tapes that Valeria Vegas recorded of ‘La Veneno’ to write her biography will be heard for the first time.

One of the most unknown uprisings in our history, "El motín del pan", was led by women in the city of Córdoba during the month of May 1652. We do not know the faces or names of those women. There is no image. How to recover the gestures of resistance of those we have not been able to see?

The gestures of these old Cordovan yard caretakers come from a transmission of feminine wisdom in working with plants that refers even to the oldest mythologies. When the cinema began, the Andalusian feminine also incorporated in its young actresses the relationship with patios and flowers as a context of the archetype. An exercise in viewing between the gestures and the times of a southern female figuration.

Several dreams, dozens of hotel rooms, an escape. A pine forest. Some women gazing out to sea, seen from behind. Images and sounds create the reverse angle of happiness.

A shot breaks the dusk. Hunters with GPS screens follow their dogs into the forest, and the night catches up with them. Elsewhere, Maina counts her sheep daily. The wolf has been sighted nearby. Adam, fascinated by this apparition, goes out to look for it with his camera, taking advantage of the full moon. Everyone relates to the animal in their own way, but they agree on one thing: they all want to see without being seen.

Going in depth into her father’s photo archive and diaries about his experience during the military service at the Sahara Spanish colony in 1964, Pilar spots the lost paradise where he always would try to come back. In the eighties and nineties, after the failure of his family project, Manuel Monsell will start to traveling to the Maghreb. Again with his photo camera, he will run after the beauty of some portraits which could move him to the place of his dreams. But all these trips reveal much more about the place of departure than about the place of destination. Romantic love, independence and family compose a stage of a refuge that getting itself broken, it commit ourselves to ask not only about our more sincere desires but also about the need of rethinking the sense of these old words.