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Film ideal siempre
 'Film ideal siempre' special |
From June 11 to September 30 D.A.E. presents a project within Manifesta 5 (European Bienal of Contemporary Art) that is taking place in -Donostia-San Sebastián. The project with the subtitle of Film ideal siempre is an initiated idea by Peio Aguirre and Leire Vergara with the collaboration of Gorka Eizagirre and Xabier Salaberria and the generous contribution of Néstor Basterretxea.
This project revolves about a non-lineal reconstruction of the past and
the perception of this past from our present.
Huarte decided in favour of the script by Basterretxea, who duly directed the film, which in post-production was given the title Operación H (the initial H of Huarte's surname).
The producers, X Films, also kept up close links with Oteiza, who at that time was turning over a number of ideas with a view to bringing them to the screen, projects that were always left half finished, his particular contribution to the medium being of a more theoretical and inspirational nature.
X Films also produced other experiments in avant-garde cinema, such as the first films by José Antonio Sistiaga and Rafael Ruiz Balerdi.
Operación H was made according to the formulas of the film industry,
and at no time in its history has it been championed as art. The film
served as an in-house promotional document for the Huarte group of companies,
and was also submitted to one or two short film competitions. Paradoxically,
the nature of the commission did not restrict the aesthetic outcome, and
the film manifests a tremendous sense of expressive and creative freedom.
If as a cultural product it adheres to the protocol of the film industry,
at the same time it is also the result of a set of artistic contributions,
both in its filming and in the post-production phase.
A number of years before, in 1957, Oteiza had won first prize at the IV
Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. To himself he used the phrase
Operación H -in military language as if it were a wartime engagement-
to refer to the 'operation' of staking everything in the biennial at a
moment of closure when he had definitively abandoned his practice as a
sculptor as an experimental conclusion. He secretly applied this denomination
to a group of his projects of those years.
Subjected to the course of history, and due to the organic situation
of its time, the film reveals a creative moment specific to the Basque
context in the 1960s. A production determined by a social situation that
promoted an independent way of working with regard to official policies
and a collective energy developed in host of shared initiatives. The re-viewing
today of this document constitutes a kind of time tunnel back to a particular
aesthetic tradition and as a catalyst of the collective unconscious.
Néstor Basterretxea recently saw the film again after not having
seen it for forty years. The passing of time has caused him to forget
a number of specific details of the process of its creation.