Lorenzo Sandoval

The film-essay Nur Al Yanub/Mediodia introduces the letter sent by a fictional character who explores cultural connections between South Spain and Morocco through patterns of different kinds. It departs from the notion of "mediodía", coined by Rodolfo Gil-Benumeya. In his book "Nor Orient, neither Occident. The Universe seen from Albaycín" he proposes a epistemology of the midday, which comes from the South and the Levant, connecting the different shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and beyond, towards the South. The film questions some of the ideas of Benumeya, proposing a friction with other thinkers, while presenting the continuity of different material productions and their relation with the rhythm of the landscape the character travels though.

The entire project examines three interconnected extractivist processes in that area of southeastern Spain: mining in La Unión, construction in La Manga, and agroindustry in the Mar Menor. This short film was scripted as a spiral, revisiting the same three locations in three rounds. It overlaps archival materials with new recordings, aiming to approach the territory as a stratified archival ground – a form of storytelling conveyed by the land and water themselves. The archival materials are treated as compacted strata, whose grain and texture offer the possibility of excavating the trauma inscribed in the territory.