Masterclass with Natalia Marín

Right after the Berlinale, Spanish filmmaker Natalia Marín makes a brief stop in Athens to initiate Greek audiences into experimental documentary. Part of film collective “Los Hijos”, Marín and her collaborators have invented a genre of their own, where ethnography meets avant-garde.

Somewhere in the Spanish countryside, two young men and a woman are shooting an old man telling stories about crimes once committed in the region. One of them is operating the camera, the other is in charge of sound and the third one is shooting the two filmmakers interviewing the old man, who keeps rattling on about stolen sheep herds and murdered shepherds. “They say one of them was buried right here, at the root of this tree,” he says. At that exact moment, the camera pointing at his face suddenly pans up and starts recording the sky and the passing clouds. As his story goes on, the film is transformed into a journey through the tree trunks, the branches and the fleeting light shining through the leaves.

That’s what observational documentary means to “Los Hijos”, it’s a journey full of questions and an irrepressible sense of humour as they explore and question the rules of filmmaking on a daily basis. Using their itinerant filmography – their shorts have travelled from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Anthology Film Archives in New York – Natalia Marín will talk about the “what, why and how” of contemporary avant-garde filmmaking, over a weekend masterclass that you won’t be able to forget in a hurry.

Natalia Marín biography

Born in Zaragoza in 1982, Natalia Marín is a video artist and teacher. Holder of a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in 2008 she founded experimental film collective Los Hijos together with Javier Fernández Vázquez and Luis López Carrasco. Her first full-length film “Los Materiales” won the Jean Vigo Best Director Prize at the 2010 Punto de Vista International Film Festival and a Mention Spéciale at FID Marseille. Marín’s work has appeared regularly at international festivals and art centers including MUSAC, Guggenheim Bilbao, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Anthology Film Archives in New York. She has also taken part in group exhibitions at Tabakalera Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporánea, PhotoEspaña, and La Casa Encendida, among others. As a teacher, she is currently working at the Escuela Internacional de San Antonio de Baños (Cuba), and the Círculo de Bellas Artes and ECAM film school in Madrid.

For more info, please visit: www.loshijos.org