"La Primera Mirada", interview with director Luis E. Parés

Fred Film Radio heard from filmmaker and historian Luis E. Parés during the London Spanish Film Festival about his documentary "The First Look" or "La Primera Mirada". Parés gave an insight into the painstaking process of viewing the entire archive created by students of a film school created during Franco's dictatorship, which was nonetheless necessary due to Parés' obsessive nature and thorough approach to his work. He shared what stood out to him on first seeing these images, showing a part of Spanish history not caught on camera before, from the extreme poverty that existed in the wake of civil war to the provocative political views, absurd humour and repression of sexual desire they explored, something otherwise forbidden during that time. He explained that the fact the film school lacked funding and was seen as only the innocuous experimentation of students, their work went under the radar of government censorship, opening up a space of relative freedom to create subversive art and capture unseen parts of the country in inventive ways, telling a different story than the one told in mainstream channels and defying the otherwise pervasive oppression. Parés further expressed his views about the importance of knowing and understanding Spain's history, cinema history and the context in which older generations grew up in order to understand the present and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, something we are able to do most powerfully through cinematographical images.