Alejandro Alonso's 'Home' and ‘The Son of the Dream': the ground our cinema treads on
By MAYTÉ MADRUGA - december 7th, 2023
RIALTA
"We learn to see ourselves through photography," is one of the best-known phrases in Susan Sontag's essay 'On Photography'. However, in the work of Cuban filmmaker Alejandro Alonso, there seems to be an express desire to unlearn to recognize ourselves through photography, through moving images. There we find marks, stains, and obscurities that perhaps come from the oneiric world.
Some of Alonso's films could also be related to the phrase that begins José Martí's essay 'Our America': "The vain villager believes that the whole world is his village". The dialogue between Martí's words and the images of ‘Home’ (2019) and 'The Son of the Dream' (2016) would construct other possible worlds, mixed identities, undefined forms of the conscious.
Both films are part of the special presentation program of the IV INSTAR Film Festival. They are available until December 10 on the online platform Festhome and will be screened at the e-fluxScreening Room in Brooklyn, New York, this Saturday, December 9.
The Cuban director has always been interested in the intervention of the image, moving or still, that opens portals to a more sensitive, less linear, more deconstructively circular understanding. Deeply rehearsed concepts and notions, such as nation, identity, or mother, find in these two films an incisive counterpoint.
Mother and homeland are not just words, or are they? 'The Son of the Dream' went to a country with numerous towns named Cuba, but he did not find his nationality there. The sound, and therefore the word, shapes the world. The words illustrate the feelings, and the images - selected by the filmmaker - are the mind that wanders, unable to discern clearly.
Memory is essential to narrate dreams, to create the nation. The homeland is sometimes as detached with its children as a mother; that is why it is important that these postcards are not given away, that they do not run the risk of falling into other hands, into another story... Postcards are the material link between mother and child. Between a citizen and his nation of origin.
According to yogic philosophy, we all have a certain number of breaths. 'In The Son...', these inhalations are a winding mechanism with its own rhythm and a limited number of turns.
There are several ways to navigate this world. Memory can be one, but this memory is often mixed with futile precisions, dates, and coordinates. These are, ultimately, small guides to something transitory, ornaments of a diffuse image that seeks to appeal to feeling, to the reconstruction of another meaning, of another homeland.
What is an idea? On the subtle level, the idea is pure thought. Prematurely, an idea becomes a prejudice. After too long, the idea becomes something over-analyzed that does not materialize. Cinema as an idea-making device is another feature that defines these two works by Alonso.
"Home", for Spanish speakers, means "casa" (house). Likewise, the word "homeland" is translated into Spanish as "Patria": in this symbolic path, physical elements such as land are lost, as well as the direct allusion to home. According to the online version of the British Collins dictionary, the word "homeland" is used to designate the country where you are born or the one you make your home. To immerse oneself in Alonso's films, it is important to highlight this second meaning: to make it home.
"Home", for Spanish speakers, is "casa". Likewise, the word "homeland" is translated into Spanish as "Patria": in this symbolic path, physical elements such as land are lost, as well as the direct allusion to home. According to the online version of the British Collins dictionary, the word "homeland" is used to designate the country where you are born or the one you make your home. To dive into Alonso's films, it is important to highlight this second meaning: to make it home.
In both 'Home' and 'The Son of the Dream', the footage induces us to take action, to believe and reconfigure what each individual should call "home", and how pertinent it is or is not to substitute the sensation of the domestic, of the warmth of home, for the abstract immensity posed by the word "homeland". The filmmaker's uncle, Julio César, decided that his ultimate home would be his family, his mother. So his nephew Alejandro rebuilds that bridge and then wonders in 'Home' if it was necessary to destroy it at some point or if it still remains.
Only through the intervention of images can the director approach these questions, dreaming of knowing himself: to propose that our essence be imagined beyond a simple nominal act or an arbitrary physical, geographical limit.
According to Sontag, "photographs transcribed on film cease to be collectible objects, as they are even when presented in books."[i]
They may not be collectible themselves, but the stories they create, the histories they illuminate, are. They are transmuted into remnants of materialized dreams, even if in the 21st century we have the impression that they will turn to dust in the wind with just a delete. And, in one way or another, they remain in a place of memory. At least, that is what happens with these films by Alejandro Alonso. Each uneasiness produced by a distorted image, each recollection of a shot, remains there, mixing in the unconscious as kundalini energy that will awake from the root to the soul.
[i] [i] Sontag Susan. On photography. Free epub. Digital edition: Titivillus. 2016, p. 9. Sobre la fotografía. Epub libre. Edición digital: Titivillus. 2016, pág. 9.
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