Posts Tagged ‘Jonas Cuaron’
Año Uña – impossible romance in still-frame photographs
Luisa went to talk with Jonas Cuaron about photographs and such for his debut film ..., Photos by Daniel Orio
Written by Luisa Gerstein
“The film was an experiment”, says Jonas Cuaron, settling down across from me on a sofa at the Renoir this Saturday. I've come for the release of his debut film, Año Uña - year of nails - and the place is abuzz with excitement; I'm especially enamoured by the snippets of Mexican-tilted Spanish I hear that always make me nostalgic (Luisa with no ‘o', can you guess?), “Ai que deliciosa!” someone behind me exclaims at the sight of a quesadilla in the first few minutes of the film; maravillosa indeed.
“I wanted to make a film”, he continues, “using a format that would be hard to watch”. Hard to watch? A legitimate concern when it dawns on you that you're in for a feature-length film composed entirely of still-frame photographs. But the merit of any film boils down to one thing, a good story - and the impossible romance between American girl and Mexican boy in the throes of puberty, subsumes this hard-to-watch format and makes it altogether accessible. Plot aside for a moment though, the genesis of the film deserves as much attention, so I asked Jonas how the whole thing came about.
JC: For the film I took photographs of my everyday life for a year. I wanted… read more
