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| Sueñan los androides |
One slightly unexpected experience at D'A Festival was that I had the opportunity to interview people in person (I tried to interview someone at a film festival last year but wasn't insistent enough in following it up, and so the chance was lost). In this case, I had asked about the possibility of interviewing specific people before I headed to the festival but didn't find out whether or not I could until I arrived in Barcelona. The delay in me starting to write reviews while I was there was effectively the time I spent preparing questions (which had to wait until I had seen the relevant films as well).
The first of these in-person interviews related to Sueñan los androides / Androids Dream and can be read over at Eye for Film - here. In fact, it was actually two interviews because I ended up interviewing director Ion de Sosa and co-writer Chema García Ibarra separately, but as I asked them the same questions - about Sueñan los androides and also Spanish cinema more generally - I've put their answers together in that piece. I will be returning to Sueñan los androides when I write something more detailed about the (Im)Possible Futures section - and I may expand that to be about Spanish sci-fi more generally, in which case I will also include Uranes (written and directed by Chema García Ibarra).
Conducting interviews in person has been a learning experience, and one which will no doubt continue in the future. For example, in contrast to interviews conducted by email, I had the chance to respond to their answers with follow up questions, but in this instance I stuck to my original questions too rigidly. That was a confidence issue on my part given that we were speaking Spanish and it was the first time I'd ever interviewed anyone, in any language (yes, I decided to go for the full-blown baptism of fire). As I said to each of the people I interviewed in Barcelona (I still need to translate my interview with Crumbs director Miguel Llansó) - I can understand the majority of what is said to me in Spanish, but sometimes I can't find the right words when I want to express myself / respond. So that hindered me a bit - although they were all very patient when I did stray from the questions I had written down and had to grasp for the right words - but I think that I did the best I could, and I'm pleased that I went for it because I would have regretted it if I hadn't. Translating the interviews (I recorded them) has also been interesting from a language comprehension perspective because it's not enough to understand the gist if you're directly quoting someone (listening to myself speaking Spanish has also underlined that I should try to find some conversation classes again - I read or listen to Spanish on a daily basis but I don't have many opportunities to speak it), so I've had to work on both picking out their precise words (which is something I don't have to worry about when the interview is done via email because I receive the words in written form) and a more nuanced understanding of the specific words used.
