Collective residencies / Cinema- Script writing I / Olot
ARNAU VILARÓ
From Monday, 17 May 2021 to Monday, 31 May 2021
Bio
Arnau Vilaró is a screenwriter, university professor and essayist. He was part of the management team of "Summer 1993" (2017) and, together with Carla Simón, has written "Alcarràs" (in the process of shooting), a film inspired in part by the childhood that Vilaró lived in a small village in Lleida. PhD in Film Studies from the UPF in Barcelona (2015), he is the author of the essay "La caricia del cine" (2017), he has dedicated his research to the study of French cinema and the revision of the work of Gilles Deleuze and has obtained predoctoral and postdoctoral research grants at Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle and at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (IIE) of UNAM in Mexico, respectively. He has worked as a film critic and has been curator of programs for the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, Barcelona City Council and “La Caixa” Welfare Projects. He is currently a film professor at the UAB, ESCAC, UOC and UPF-Tecnocampus universities.
Project
The script "Man and Days" ("Els homes i els dies") is based on the posthumous autofiction that David Vilaseca wrote between 1987 and 2010, before losing his life at the age of 45. The script focuses on a specific episode in David's life: before he turned 30, after reading a pioneering doctoral dissertation in queer studies at the University of London and putting an end a four-year relationship of infidelities, he decides to return to Barcelona, in full celebration of the Olympic Games. In Faberllull, I plan to tackle a first version of the script, strengthening the relationship between the three elements that define the character's psychology —family, writing, and sexuality— through which David interrogates his identity and begins a work of psychoanalysis that will obsess him all his life.
The joy of sharing processes
Because of my way of conceiving the script, I find it essential that the writing process be accompanied by constant feedback from scriptwriters, writers, specialists in the subject of the film or people who, in one way or another, connect with the material, the character, the spaces, the context, etc. On the one hand, Faberllull has offered me this possibility by sharing work time and dialogues at recess with a dozen residents who are at a similar stage of script development to me. People with whom, to a large extent, we share a vital moment and interests, despite the differences we may have, which are always enriching and welcome, in terms of approach, narrative and aesthetic references, etc. From Faberllull, I take with me, fundamentally, this shared experience which, taking into account the bond we have built over two weeks, I know will continue to exist outside the residency. We will continue to read each other and discuss our projects, and being able to share processes, our own and those of others, is the most valuable learning, surely because it humanises what sometimes seems that we do only out of ambition, vocation or desire.
On the other hand, the accompaniment I have had with Nieves Rodríguez has been of great benefit. It was a surprise that the script consultant assigned to me was a connoisseur of the story I am adapting, as well as having a transversal academic background like that of the character and a deep knowledge of psychoanalysis, one of the main therapies of the protagonist and about which I had strong questions to ask myself. With Nieves, we have questioned the basis of the project, characters, structure, etc., it has helped me to have a fairly solid version of treatment to face a first version of the script and has made me see what is the value of the project and the need to carry it out: where does the desire to write the story I want to write come from, in short. In short, "the exercise has been profitable", as a well-known film critic used to say. And it has been so in all senses: on-the-job and experiential learning. Residencies like Faberllull's, the only one in our country on screenwriting, are necessary today to value writing as a job and Catalan cinema as an industry with renewed ideas from young people, necessary to look at the world, to question it, to imagine it.