Pedro Comesaña talks about Emética, film that is going to be open as a premiere at (S8)

Pedro Comesaña, author of Emética (Mentes Distintas) -short that will be screened at (S8) within the sectionRetrieved and Unpublished Galicia’s Cinema- talks us about his first experience with the image world.

Emética is the result of my first contact with the world of images and consequently he/she became the reason why I decided to dedicate my career to the cinema and the audiovisual world. In 1981, when I was seventeen, in the surroundings of Vigo there were few options to get into the audiovisual world. Not even there were photography schools and much less, Audiovisual Schools. There were only two TV channels, the 1 and the 2, and Internet was science fiction.

Destiny wanted that one of my uncles bought a Super8 camera to tape familiar films, and just right then I had the possibility to get closer to the image from a creative way.
With a small book with 200 practical pieces of advice as the only technical help, some savings to buy and later send to develop the Super8 cartridges and a great display of willingness to do something different from the traditional familiar films, I decide, together with a friend of mine, to jump on the adventure of filming Emética. Emética is the result of the artistic interests of two young men that being influenced by the horror literature and the musical movements of the 80ies such as Joy Division, Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, Iggi Pop, David Bowie and other groups closer to our time, Siniestro Total and Eméticos…They tried to create something original and not conventional.
Ironies of destiny, now after resting 30 years in a drawer, and nearly by coincidence, it is going to be screened for first time. I am conscious about the technical and narrative imperfections of this short movie. Even so, I did not want to touch absolutely anything so as to try and improve it. Editing could still be improved, but the essence of Emética lies just in this fact. The technical imperfections: wrong framings, faulty movements of the camera, lack of focus, wrong editing…in this case, from my point of view -nowadays a professional judgment- these imperfections give Emética a character with an unquestionable personality and an artistic poison that get all these defects to add up in its advantage obtaining a higher strength and a greater visual impact.
Besides all these mistakes result of the ignorance and lack of professionalism, I must highlight that during a private showing -with the intention of video taping this audiovisual experiment and therefore be able to watch it with a greater comfort- the electricity inexplicably went off twice during the video recording, and consequently the projector destroyed two pieces of the original film, thus losing them forever. This fact contributes the history to be disabled and consequently it could be found different interpretations of what it is already implied. Nonetheless, if this accident took place is because it was meant to be, and each one of us is free to interpret whatever we want about this damned and experimental exercise.

Emética, during its almost 30 years of existence it has always being a dumb movie. Never, until now, it has being incorporated music to accompany it. At (S8)’s organizing team request suggesting me the possibility to provide it with an appropriate soundscape, I got in contact with the suitable person to create this universe of sound that would accompany the images. The co-leader of the group Eméticos -damned musical group from the 80ies coming from the surroundings of Vigo and, in some way, Emetica’s source of inspiration- is the one responsible for the music edition following the same scarcity of resources and exploring into the feelings of sound as some kind of cut and paste way of recycling already existing music from different authors, removing fragments and mixing them, composing in such a unconventional and suitable manner the soundscape that will always accompany Emética.

The only reason why I agreed to screen Emética is due to pure romanticism. Its existence marked my destiny and from this perspective, it has a clear sentimental, emotional and nostalgic ingredient for me.