MEMORIA AFECTIVA – TRACING THE PAST THROUGH FILM

Memoria Afectiva is a season of short films showcasing explorations into memory and the archive by emerging Spanish filmmakers. Spanning experimental documentary to fiction, the programme traces intertwining personal, familial, and political histories. Tracing the manifestation of memories we would like to forget, to ones that must be preserved, these films explore the past, and the ways in which it never leaves us.

📅18th January, 7.30pm (screening starts at 8pm)

📍St Peter’s Church Hall, Lutton Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9PE

This event is wheelchair accessible and features both English and descriptive subtitles. This means that as well as dialogue, key sounds from the films will also be transcribed in subtitles, such as [engine roaring] or [whistle blowing.

Event duration: 1 hour 43 minutes of films plus a 10 minute interval.

Note that some shorts in the programme contain adult themes.

SHORT FILM SELECTION:

Aitana

Marina Alberti | 2023 | Spain | 19’ |  Spanish with English subtitles

Marina is haunted by the idea of losing her memory. Her grandmother suffered memory loss and now her mother Aitana, daughter of the writer Maria Teresa Leon and the poet Rafael Alberti, seems to be as well. Locked in a room which her mother has not left for some time, she insists on reliving her memories. In the silence of the night, her family’s past returns, it is the history of a country and an entire century.

Notas, encantaciones: Parte II, Carmela / Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela

Alexandra Cuesta | 2020 | Ecuador, USA | 5’ | Spanish with English subtitles

An afternoon exercise of piecing together minimal details for safekeeping: my Grandmother’s garden, her music, recipes for well-being.

Cosas que no van a morir / Things That Won’t Die

Manuela Gutiérrez Arrieta | 2022 | Spain | 15´ | Spanish with English subtitles

Contains references to online sexual violence and consent

After finding some videos she uploaded to YouTube when she was a child, Manuela attempts to follow the trail she herself has left on the Internet. A search that looks into all the things that won’t ever die and that, especially, thinks about the way we look at ourselves.

Lúa, techno, y lo que queda de él

Carlos Baixauli | 2023 | Spain | 10’|  Spanish with English subtitles

You called. I didn’t recognize your voice. I can’t recall your face. I can’t even associate your name with the memories I have. You’ve become a blurry silhouette. It’s not the real you anymore, just a “him”: what’s left of him.” – Lúa thinks, as she loses her mind dancing to the radio’s techno.

Vuelta a Riaño / Back to Riaño

Miriam Martín | 2023 | Spain | 15’ | Spanish with English subtitles

Moving images shot from the ground against moving images shot from the sky. The words of women, men and children against official speeches. People who don’t want to move, “just like the pine tree by the riverbank”. A valley turned into a reservoir. Class struggle lies underground… and underwater.

INCUBO

Chloe Cazorla | 2024 | Spain | 13’ | Spanish with English subtitles

Child sexual abuse theme

One morning, Chloe Cazorla buys the newspaper El País and finds an article about her neighbourhood: a paedophile, resident of the same place, has been arrested thanks to a video discovered by the security forces of a country on the other side of the world.

Naturaleza muerta 

Carolina Astudillo | 2020 | Spain | 5’ | German with English subtitles

Freud described the sinister (unheimlich) as a contradictory experience where the strange is presented to us as known and the known becomes strange. A granddaughter discovers that her grandmother’s past was very different from what she had been told. Could it be that in times of war, morality is subordinated to survival?

Orbayu

Miguel Ariza | 2022 | Spain | 20’ | Spanish with English subtitles

A random card reading awakens buried memories in José, whose destiny, the tarot reader Tesa says, will be to face them.