MADERA

An old man with a machete carefully circles round a tree. The precision with which he prepares the felling reflects the formal dimension of Madera: a rigorous framing and a perfectly paced switching between contemplation and conversation. What’s more, these are the two main occupations of Abelardo, who tends to the nature around his house while pencilling down his memories. Yet, nature and remembering are not just abstract notions linked together by the portrayal of an end-of-life return to the land. They are physically inseparable from this eighty-year-old’s (hi)story. “His forest”, rustling with storms and birdsong, served as cover for the revolutionary troops he belonged to in his youth. With his wife Marbelia, who talks endlessly about the lengthening life expectancy that she intends to benefit from, the old man forms an almost Beckettian couple. If Mister turns a deaf ear when Missus talks about living until a hundred and twenty, it may be that the History he is revisiting in his autobiography gives greater import to the timeliness of an act than to duration. For Abelardo, only the trees seem to have deserved their longevity… (Charlotte Garson)