The Year of the Discovery

In 1992, ten years after Felipe Gonzalez’s labour party victory, Spain appears as a vibrant, modern and civilized country. However, in a south-eastern town, Cartagena, some riots and protests ended in the burning of the regional parliament with Molotov cocktails.

On 3 Febrary 1992 in Cartagena (Spain), after weeks of mobilisation against the programmed destruction of local industries, the clashes between demonstrators and the “forces of law and order” resulted in the burning down of the Parliament of the Autonomous Community. This event, announced at the beginning of El año del descubrimiento, is the reference point for the present-day discussions filmed in a café. The topics cover work conditions, addictions, pollution, Spanish multiculturalism, the Franco years, etc. The outdated video format projects the 21st-century bodies into a bygone age, especially as the contemporary stories are rhythmed by archive images from 1992. El año del descubrimiento is presented as an agora where each citizen can have his or her say, and where contradictory viewpoints can coexist. The statement the “young people today know nothing about politics” is taken with reserve when the opposite has just been evidenced. It is not a matter of knowing who is right and what to think, but how to create society out of the singular experiences of each. The use of the split screen points up the complexity of the democratic space: the black line dividing the screen has the power to bring two distant faces close together, put them on the same plane, but the place that it creates is paradoxical and purely cinematographic. For want of being able to transpose it into the real world, the film uses this encounter between generations and perspectives to formulate a manifesto against a deleterious short-termism.

Olivia Cooper-Hadjian