As a writer of fiction, my journeys into the world of short film began in the realm of the fictitious. While not averse to documentary, or nonfiction for that matter, I did grow up with the misconceived idea that documentaries were films without story. How wrong I was. Having recently met a couple of documentary filmmakers, the directing duo Elena Goatelli and Angel Esteban, I took an interest in their work and discovered that story is very much at the heart of all their work. While their films inform, creating social and environmental awareness, they also tell stories. Stories about real people, in real worlds. The notion, then, that the documentary filmmaker simply focuses the camera on a subject, lets it roll, captures the world without any manipulation of the narrative, is far from the truth. Film documentaries are, rather, a re-imagining of reality, much in the same way we all tell stories of the same events in different ways. Or how we reconstruct our memories into a narrative that makes sense to us, and others. The documentary is more a personal interpretation, an imaginative envisioning of an outer reality. Think Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo journalism, or the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, himself once a journalist, in which we find a subjective perception of the real world. Or, simply, a personal experience.
In his work Oneself as Another (1992), the French philosopher Paul Ricœur wrote of the space between historical truth and the fictional. Ricœur posed the question of whether a structure may be applied to our experience that integrates historical narrative and fictional narrative:
Do we not consider human lives to be more readable when they have been interpreted in terms of the stories that people tell about them? Are not these life stories in turn made more intelligible when the narrative models of plots – borrowed from history or from fiction (drama or novel) – are applied to them?
In response, the idea of narrative identity emerged, whether it be that of a person or a community, a form of narrative that lies between the story told by history and the story told by fiction. In other words, a form of narrative that is neither entirely factual nor completely invented, but one that lies between the two. Thus, Ricœur argued that understanding how one constructs narrative, how we tell stories, is intuitive, that the human lives we speak of (ours and others) are better understood when they have been interpreted and presented within a narrative structure acquired from the recognisable models adopted from history and fiction. What better way to describe documentary than as a visual experience where fact meets fiction.
The short film documentary, then, is that space compressed. Directing a documentary short film allows filmmakers the opportunity to hone their craft whilst creating a portal into the real world. All the more poignant in these times of viewing the world from an enclosed space, the documentary permits us, now more than ever, to appreciate the world that for the time being is off-limits to many of us.
One such world can be seen in Auspìcio (2019), the short film documentary by Elena Goatelli and Angel Esteban, the dynamic directing duo who make up KOTTOMfilms.
Auspìcio allows us a closer look at the important work being done by scientist and ornithologist Doctor Francesca Rossi within the Brocon Pass in the Dolomites. The title of the film stems from the Latin terms auspicium (divination of omens) and auspex (the interpreter of omens). Augury, the interpreting of omens through the observed behaviour of birds, dates back to the religious practices of ancient Rome. While today augury methods are far more scientific, through which the flight patterns and times of migrating birds are recorded and analyzed, the message is perhaps even more relevant to our times of increasingly rapid climate change: our survival depends on our ability to read the signs nature provides us.
I recently caught up with Elena and Angel to ask them about the film and their experience as filmmakers.
INTERVIEW WITH KOTTOMfilms (Elena Goatelli and Angel Esteban)
What were the beginnings of KOTTOMfilms? Can you explain the name?
We founded KOTTOMfilms in 2012. We were living in Madrid and we decided to produce our own films and leave the television world we were working in. Very tough decision, but it was the right one, never regret it. I invented the name KOTTOM when one day we had to go to a party dressed up like famous film characters, we didn’t have any costumes so with a group of friends we shot a micro short film with ourselves as protagonists, we uploaded it to YouTube, and put in the credits the name KOTTOMfilms.
How did the Auspicio project come to be?
In an autumn walk at Passo Brocon, in the mountains near our home we discovered the ringing station and met Francesca. We fell in love with the place and the way Francesca expressed her work. I immediately thought we had to shoot there. I convinced Angel to go back with the camera and we made Auspicio.
How is each new project born? Is it ever a systematic approach? In other words, do you choose your projects or do they choose you?
It depends on the project. Auspicio and TOM, the film about the British alpinist Tom Ballard, were born by chance. Fate, destiny. We met these wonderful people and stories and we decided we had to make a film about them. But if you want to live from making films you need to be systematic, to find the story, to write a treatment, find a production company and start a very long process of financing. That’s why we started to work with other production companies to focus just on directing.
What attracts you to the short film as a form?
After a very long process making our long feature film Malditos, we needed to make something short, direct, and fast. And it was our first short film. It’s a very good exercise of synthesis.
People outside of the world of film might not realise the necessity of narrative in the documentary. How important is the story element? To what extent do structure and story interplay in your work?
Great question. Every time we start a new film, even just the idea, we have to create, imagine a story arc, the structure, how protagonists may interact among them. In documentary film this can sound strange, but even if you are dealing with reality and not fiction, the narrative “rules” are the same. Of course you must be very flexible, things usually don’t go as you expected, sometimes for good.
Recurrent themes in your films seem to be nature, the individual, community. Is there a fundamental premise that underlies all your work?
This is something we asked ourselves. How and why we choose these stories…I think it’s always about ourselves and how we perceive our role inside our community, how we push since we met the first time to get the best out of each other, to find the right place to be, meaning the creative place. It’s not easy, you need a lot of effort and perhaps the protagonists of our films are always fighting to find their place, to give sense to what they’re doing.
Experimental is a word associated with some of your films. Would you agree? If so, could you elaborate?
It depends on the meaning you give to experimental. The experimental is a huge field, in our own experience we started to look for different approaches to the structure, trying to combine different narrative levels. For example, Auspicio is very poetic but at the same time very textual, but the two souls we think perfectly combine. In Malditos we play with reality and fiction, theatre and real life.
As a directing duo, do you ever find yourselves in disagreement at any stage in the process?
Of course! We usually have such moments in the editing process, when we are deciding how the film is really going to be. We fight and we usually decide for the best of the film, each of us makes her/his pitch and the most convincing one wins.
Which directors have the biggest influence on you as film-makers? Past and present.
Too many! We have always been enthusiastic cinema spectators and we think that our way to make films has been influenced by so many filmmakers, but also by music composers, writers, artists. We think the best influence for a creator must come from as many different fields as possible. Anyway, we love Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, Sergio Leone, Carlos Saura, Elio Petri, Henri- Geroges Clouzot, Jim Jarmush, Frederick Wiseman, Adam Berline….I realise now that in this list of filmmakers there are no women, and it’s sad but true. In many many years we haven’t watched any films made by women. The presence was and still is so little that it’s a shame. So we look forward to watching more films made by women.
Do you have any plans for future shorts?
We are working on a short film “I love Madrid” about a Cuban artist in Madrid and we hope to start editing soon the materials we shot last November in our journey by car to Spain during the pandemic.
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As Auspìcio (2019) is still part of many festival programmes, it is at present unavailable to view. However, it will soon be available to the public on the KOTTOMfilms website. For more information visit: www.kottomfilms.com/auspicio
copyright©️KOTTOMfilms 2021 (https://www.kottomfilms.com/auspicio)
Ryan Licata
