Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Tiniest Place at LAFF


‘The tiniest place” (El lugar más pequeño) is an extraordinary documentary on the aftermath of war in the tiny village of Cinquera, El Salvador. Tatiana Sánchez Huezo, the director of the film, grew up in Mexico, but her family has roots in this isolated town destroyed during El Salvador’s civil war. Sánchez Huezo cinematographic return to Cinquera evokes Juan Rulfo’s famous novel ‘Pedro Páramo'. In Rulfo’s novel, the main character returns to his hometown of Comala to find it in inhabited by ghosts. Sánchez Huezo does encounter people of flesh and blood in Cinquera. However, in the course of the film she shows us the extent to which rebuilders of Cinquera actually live with the past and especially with their loved-ones that were killed during the war. The paused and timeless photography of daily life in Cinquera contrasts, at once painfully and soothingly, with the inner life of its inhabitants. They endeavor to find life in the aftermath of war, making sense of what they gained in the course of their struggle, and, above all, trying to find a place for what was lost.

Reviews

‘The Tiniest Place” shows at the Latin American Film Festival (LAFF) in Utrecht on Thursday April 19 (17:30) and Saturday April 21 (15:00).

Saturday after the film, there will be a panel organized by La Chispa, featuring Carlos Morales, a Salvadoran who lived with the people of Cinquera during the war, and Michelle Melara, a Salvadoran sociologist.


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