In this film, the director brings the Japanese technique of kintsugi (using gold tracing to recover fragmented, broken pieces) to the cinema, “piecing together” — with the parsimonious help of sound and a transhuman walk through the Basque landscape — some disparate but very personal elements: Oskar Alegría’s father’s Super-8 camera, two unused film reels and two pieces of footage stored, all intact after 41 years.
“This film is about a path. But above all about a way of walking.” The director rescued his father’s Super-8 and travelled through what was familiar to him: the remains of home and an old shepherd’s trail. Forty years ago, the film camera went silent just as Oskar Alegria’s grandfather’s voice was about to be recorded for later remembrance. From this premise, Zinzindurrunkarratz takes us to listen for the first time, weaving the principles of cinema that we always take for granted: the synchronism of sound and image. In this inventory of small gestures of nostalgia, we realise how impossible it is to hold on to the thread of the present moment, since the imprint of the past and ancestral knowledge on the ground is so tangible. (Bianca Dias)
