Marina is haunted by the idea of losing her memory. Her grandmother suffered memory loss and now her mother Aitana, daughter of the writer Maria Teresa Leon and the poet Rafael Alberti, seems to be as well. Locked in a room which her mother has not left for some time, she insists on reliving her memories. In the silence of the night, her family’s past returns, it is the history of a country and an entire century.
Title: Aitana
Internacional title: Aitana
Genre: Doc
Estimated length: 18:43 minutes
Shooting format and recording location: Digital 2K y Súper 8 mm. Cuba
Screening format: DCP
Country of production: Spain
Original language: Spanish
Subtitles: English
Produced by: El Viaje Films
Production year: 2023
Release year: September 2023
Color: Color
Aspect Ratio: 1:85:1
Sound: Dolby 5.1
Director: Marina Alberti
Script: Marina Alberti, with de collaboration of José Alayón
Producers: José Alayón, Marina Alberti, José Miguel Viña, Jamie Weiss and Jairo López.
Executive producer: Helena Girón.
Cinematography: José Alayón.
Art: Amparo Baeza
Sound desing Carlos E. García.
Editing: José Alayón and Samuel M. Delgado.
Color: Manuel López.
Mixes: Emilio Garcia
With: Aitana Alberti, Marina Alberti, Aitana Alberti Alayón.
Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica. Biennale di Venezia. Sección Orizzonti Competition.
SEMINCI – Semana internacional de cine de Valladolid. Sección Oficial | Premio Espiga de plata a mejor cortometraje.
Bogoshorts – XXI Festival de cortos de Bogotá. Competencia Internacional | Mejor Cortometraje Documental
L’Alternativa. Festival de Cine Independiente de Barcelona. Sección Oficial Nacional.
Semana de Cine de Medina del Campo | Best Documentary and Best Sound
MiradasDoc – Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de Guía de Isora | Sección Mirada Canaria
Huesca International Film Festival | Mención Especial del Jurado en la Sección Oficial Documental
Florence Short Film Festival
Hot Docs Film Festival & Market
Akbank Short Film Festival
CortoGijón – Festival Nacional de Cortometrajes de Gijón
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival | Richard Leacock Award for Best Short Film
Festival International de Cine de Lanzarote
Concurso Iberoamericano de Cortometrajes Versión Española-SGAE
Aitana is my first work as a director. I filmed it with my life and work partner Jose Alayón, photographer of ‘Blanco en blanco’, ‘Eles transportan a morte’ or ‘La ciudad oculta’, and it is entirely shot in my house in Cuba where my mother has lived for 38 years.
What began as a story about the relationship between two women, daughter and mother, who do not leave the room, evoking times, spaces and people from a bed, became a daughter’s obsession with her mother’s forgetfulness, and the continuum of kinship between grandmother, mother, daughter and granddaughter. My mother is 81 years old and is the daughter of the Spanish writers of the 1927 generation Rafael Alberti and Maria Teresa León, doubly displaced/exiled by the dictatorship in Spain and later by Argentina, who took them to live in Rome until 1977 and were able to return to Spain after 38 years of exile.
The ghost of my grandmother brought me to this intimate space. The only way I could find closeness with my mother was to make this film with her, locked within memory’s odd temporality. This short film is an exercise in remembrance, both for her and my daughter, but also a metaphor for the loss of historical memory of my grandparent’s country.
Marina Alberti
