\n\tThere\u2019s a touching scene in Jose Alay\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cDance of the Living,\u201d which competes at San Sebasti\u00e1n\u2019s New Directors, where one Canary Island wrestler has just won a bout, charging his opponent and upending him onto the ground. Both get up and the winner raises the arm of the loser and applauds him briefly in a sign of respect.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe loser is Miguel Bethancourt, the male lead in \u201cDance in the Living,\u201d once, one senses, a champion on Canary Island Fuenteventura\u2019s wrestling scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn another scene, wrestlers sit at a bar, celebrating Miguel\u2019s birthday, cracking jokes, with the comfortable familiarity of people who feel accepted as part of their world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Miguel drives home with daughter Mariana, they pass walls of black rock, littered with shale, and then come into sight of a mountain rearing in the background which still catches the full force of the sun, looking as if it has plucked from the planet Venus.<\/p>\n
\n\tSold by Bendita Film Sales, (\u201cThe August Virgin,\u201d \u201cSamsara,\u201d \u201cManas\u201d) \u201cDance of the Living\u201d (\u201cLa Lucha\u201d), Alay\u00f3n\u2019s second feature after Slimane (2013), turns on Miguel and daughter Mariana\u2019s struggle to move forward after the death of wife and mother Pilar, herself a champion wrestler.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tTheir whole world evolves around traditional Canarian wrestling. But Miguel\u2019s has a chronic knee injury and Mariana rages at the world, pushing her to bite an opponent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tCanary Island wrestling is captured in three sections of the film, shot in a Neo-doc style, but focusing as much of the wrestlers\u2019 physique as success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThis is no road-to-glory sports movie. Rather, \u201cDance of the Living\u201d \u2013 selected by\u00a0Variety\u00a0in a series of New Director features, in its San Sebasti\u00e1n Dailies \u2013 shows the wrestlers\u2019 whole world \u2013 Miguel\u2019s sister cooking, Mariana taking driving lessons on he island\u2019s dirt roads\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 and Fuenteventura\u2019s visual texture, whether the folds of a sunlit mountain, which looks like rough skin, or light in a valley at dusk, night and early dawn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cDance of the Living\u201d weighs in as one of the highest-profile films to come out of the Canary Islands, where Alay\u00f3n is one of their leading film producers, founding in 2004 El Viaje Films (\u201cSlimane,\u201d \u201cDead Slow Ahead,\u201d \u201cThey Carry Death,\u201d \u201cWhite on White\u201d).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tVariety\u00a0caught up with Alay\u00f3n just before the world premiere of \u201cDance of the Living\u201d at San Sebasti\u00e1n.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cDance of the Living\u201d captures bouts of Canary Island wrestling. The scenes are memorable. But the film goes beyond that to deliver a far broader picture of the wrestlers\u2019 world\u2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tI took nearly two years to cast \u201cDance of the Living.\u201d All of its actors are wrestlers, or have wrestled. I already had a screenplay, but talking with them, we realized how wresting, la lucha, served to generates bonds, a society, which gave a sense to their lives. We had anticipated this when we wrote but they confirmed it. La lucha is a way of escape, allowing people to forget their problems\u2026.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut it goes beyond that, right?<\/p>\n
\n\tLa lucha was practised by North Africa\u2019s Berbers, when they settled on the Islands centuries before their Spanish Conquest. It gives a powerful sense of roots, of maintaining an ancestral Canary Island culture, a pride at belonging to something larger than themselves. It gives a powerful sense of roots, of maintaining an ancestral Canary Island culture, a pride at belonging to something larger than themselves.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd can you see this act of resistance as a metaphor for Canary Island filmmaking or filmmaking in general?<\/p>\n
\n\tWe all have our obsessions, united to our emotions, me as a cineaste, them as wrestlers. I sensed an identification when I saw the wrestlers practicing their locks, which are called ma\u00f1as. They fall, get up, fall, get to their feet again, which is rather like shooting a film, shooting a shot, repeating, trying to construct something. But I think Canary Island wrestling is a powerful metaphor which can be applied to many aspects of life, ad is. Basic element of Canary Islands identity. If you ask me to describe their identity with three figures, one would be a wrestler.<\/p>\n
\n\tIs Canary Islands wrestling growing?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThere was a boom in the \u201880s, then it declined, but it\u2019s coming back again, especially in mid-sized villages and parts of the coast, in Fuerteventura, where we shot. Wrestling events are packed, wrestlers are stars. Wrestling is important in Tenerife as well, but found in all the Islands, with competitions between them. But wrestling sparks huge passions in Fuerteventura, which is one of the reasons why we shot there. Also, you have its mountains, its brutal landscapes. There a kind of parallel between the wrestlers\u2019 giant bodies and these giant mountains. We tried at least to play with this.<\/p>\n
\n\tMore to come<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a touching scene in Jose Alay\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cDance of the Living,\u201d which competes at San Sebasti\u00e1n\u2019s New Directors,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,69366,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-150974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-san-sebastian-film-festival","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}