a los libros y a las mujeres canto

[to books and women i sing]

maría elorza | spain, 2022 | 72'

four women, four lives, four libraries. maría elorza's debut feature, titled with a pointedly repurposed paraphrase from virgil, is a playful quadruple portrait of four different women united by their love of literature. the film is in itself a library of sorts: interspersed with the interviews with its subjects we find a cornucopia of archival materials, artworks, found footage, quotations, all coming together to form a sympathetic homage to the quiet and patient resistance of ordinary people cultivating and protecting the things that mean the most to them - in the director's own words: "standing against fire, water, moths, dust, ignorance and fanaticism, an anonymous female army looks after books".

the screening will be preceded by goodbye words, laura rantanen's elegiac essay on ephemerality observing the life cycle of abandoned books.

a los libros y a las mujeres canto | maría elorza | spain, 2022 | 72'

direction and script maría elorza | cinematography maría elorza | editing maría elorza | sound maría elorza, xanti salvador | production koldo almandoz, marian fernández pascal | distribution / copy source txintxua films

goodbye words | laura rantanen | finland, 2023 | 22'

direction and script laura rantanen | cinematography iris kärkkäinen | editing heli kota | sound konsta verta | music tuomas kettunen | production jenni jauri / aalto university - elo film school | distribution / copy source aalto university - elo film school