Waiting for Sancho

An ontological exploration is where cinema becomes more than cinema. Peranson features in Serra’s film Birdsong and watches him giving birth to a film that, until then, was barely sketched out on paper, and discovers almost in real time the very essence of his film.

«Well, the one thing I was going to say – the one thing I understood based on observing him for a day and starting to shoot, and what I hope people get out of the film – is how the line between the film and not-the-film is extremely porous and loose. In my film, this is what I tried to show: it is about filmmaking, with the concrete makingof-a-film, but also about how he makes his own world, in a way. That style – the way he directs people, the environment on the set, the way that all these people are from the same small town outside of Spain – it allows him to do something which, I think, translates onto the screen as something unique. But in my film, you see how even the film Birdsong, in a way, becomes a chronicle of its own making. The scene where we’re walking on the mountain and him and Sancho are talking back and forth about the clouds, and being above the clouds – the next thing you see is (the Kings) sitting there, talking about being above the clouds. In a sense, the experience of making it is translated into the actual finished project. […] That similarity, too, is very interesting, because I edited my film – the first cut – before I saw his film at all. So that last shot of the sun, I didn’t know he’d have a shot like that in the film. And I didn’t know it would be so funny, actually. Well, a lot of people think it’s funny, and I do, too… [The two films have] the same sort of moments – long moments where nothing happens, and then dialogue moments that are funny, and more long moments… And then different settings, and then they get to Mary and Joseph at the end, and then they say goodbye. [The similarity is] pretty funny, coincidental. But maybe we were on the same wavelength, I don’t know…»

Mark Peranson interviewed by Alan McInnis, October 3rd 2008 (http://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com)