Canary pioneers in the dark

One of the archive images of 'Women on the island: The other daughters of the mestre', which premieres today at the Cinesa de El Muelle. / C7

Macu Machín premieres this Saturday in two screenings his feature film 'Mujeres en la isla: Las otros hijas del Mestre' at Canarias Cinema

They shone in dark times and this Saturday in a dark movie theater a series of Canarian pioneers who were ahead of their time with their courage and talent return to splendor. They do it with the help of the island filmmaker Macu Machín, who premieres her feature film
'Women on the island: The other daughters of the Mestre' within the section competition
Canary Islands Cinema of the 21st installment of the international festival of the capital of Gran Canaria.

at all times through
archive footage, the film carries out an authoritative and exciting portrait of a series of women who were pillars of cultural and intellectual development in the islands and in their time. For it,
Macu Machin features two inspiring elements,
the film and the zarzuela 'La hija del Mestre' and the magazine 'Mujeres en la isla'.

"The film can be understood as a record of memory, although I think it is something more subjective and elaborate," says the director.
«My film is going to be just as perishable or precarious at some point than the very materials that I have used to compose it, both cinematographic, television and photographic”, he confesses.

The film is part of a commission from
Canary Islands Lyric Workshop. «This association contacted me a few years ago, when they recovered 'La hija del Mestre. When the live presentation of the film with music by Jonay Armas, I participated with 'Quemar las naves'.
Gonzalo Angle, from the association, he told me that he would like me to go a little further to continue pulling the thread. His proposal seemed fantastic to me. Although I was preparing another film,
'Litter'the pandemic made 'Women on the island: The other daughters of the Mestre' come out earlier, because it was easier to work with archive material in those sanitary circumstances, "explains the director.

Macu Machín acknowledges that he enjoys the
orders. “They are challenges. I do not understand them as something corseted and they serve me to respond to my wishes as director. I take them as a game, but a serious game,
as a challenge to force myself to experiment and grow in the audiovisual field. I think that's why they keep calling me for this kind of thing », she points out on the phone with a laugh.

The film, which is being screened this Saturday in two screenings, at
10:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., in the Cinesa of the El Muelle Shopping Center, is developed entirely with archive material. “That we had to confine ourselves helped this decision. The world situation ended up marking the line for me to follow.
I've always loved found footage. starting from foreign material to resignify it in a free and contemporary way. I have made the film out of love and the most absolute respect. I have worked for two years with great affection and locked up at home for this. Before I did a lot of research, I read a lot and I interviewed the children and grandchildren of some of the protagonists and who lived part of what is told. During the movie,
Macu Machín herself assumes the role of the voiceover. “It is what links the stories and so I give it a subjective form. What I do is rearrange the puzzle and the voice over marks my own gaze. I think it is an exercise in honesty to clarify that it is a personal vision».

The connection with the zarzuela and the film 'La hija del Mestre' is marked by two of the women who focus much of the attention on this production.
Marisa Padronwho gave life to Rosilla in the film, and
little table, who did the same in the stage-musical production.

Macu Machín includes in his proposal fragments of a television interview with Paquita Mesa herself. He does the same with two other pioneers whom he also values ​​in the film,
Lola Massieu and Pino Ojeda. "I had these interviews and it seemed appropriate that the main voice was that of these women who portray themselves," he says.

«I wanted to continue investigating Marisa Padrón, who was tied to the fateful character of the film. Also to other women who at the beginning of the 20th century left the close bond of the home, to which they were tied, since they could only aspire to be wives", says the filmmaker who in her film addresses the birth and development of the magazine 'Mujeres en the island'. «They had a lot of ingenuity and I don't know if they were innocent or rebellious in proposing the project of setting up a women's only magazine. It is true that they were from high society, but they had many impediments and obligations and managed to maintain it for ten years », she adds.

The reality of this publication, the
Society of Friends of Art, Isabel Macario and Gala de Reschkoamong others, are some of the institutions and women who also parade through a production that today has begun its tour of festivals in order, according to its director, "to create a kind of daydream that allows the viewer to land on this island one hundred years ago, when He entered modernity very quickly ».