Gods of Stone

One November evening, I braved the cold and headed to the RIDM to find myself on the edge of Galicia, Spain, and Portugal, where these territories meet. On that border, that evening, I had a memorable encounter.

The film blurs all boundaries: those between reality and fiction, colour and black-and-white, past and present. It does not pursue experimentation for its own sake, nor some new way of making images. It simply lays bare time, probably cinema’s greatest ally. Iván Castiñeiras Gallego has resolutely taken his time and the film’s time, weaving them together with the landscapes to construct an impressionistic narrative that makes you want to walk along that very line.

For what is cinema? We try to define it, to reinvent it. And then, sometimes, something happens. A soul and a sound cross the border of the image. The image, too, becomes porous and begins to exchange something with us, much like those historic forms of solidarity that have long existed across this border.

And suddenly, there we are on a diesel moped with the postman, delivering mail to these small stone villages, where the houses are so tightly intertwined that American cars cannot get through. All the better. We enter into the intimacy of families overshadowed by impending territorial conflicts, particularly as mining interests continue to encroach ever further.

The film leaves mysteries in its wake. The stones and the gods are there, silent and rooted. I prefer to leave them where the film found them. Since then, I’ve walked through and come to love this land. This kind of cinema is an encounter.

Sylvie Lapointe
Filmmaker