The prolific filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, double winner of the Oscar for best director, hopes that in the six-year term of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo there will be more support for cinema, since in the previous one there was none, especially because the so-called seventh art, in addition to being a economic source, generator of jobs, it is also a cultural projection of the country.
“Is support for cinema essential? It is. I hope that this six-year term things will improve. Cinema, in addition to being an economic source, is that when making a film it is not just the director and the actors and some technicians; “This is what making a film entails, the work on locations, the work that generates jobs around the same project and it is also a cultural projection of our country, a very important cultural projection,” he considered in an interview with Forbes.
Visiting Mexico to promote his new project, the series Disclaimer produced by Apple TV+, Cuarón highlighted current Mexican cinema, especially that made by women with very strong themes.
“Mexican cinema is currently exceptional, and above all, the cinema that women filmmakers are making is very impressive. I believe that what is at the forefront of Mexican cinema now turns out to be female filmmakers, who first of all are filmmakers, wonderful directors, who happen to be women, and that is a very strange coincidence. It is a very extraordinary cinema, and they are also daring to touch on strong, difficult themes; Here are some of the most important filmmakers in the world and there are also impressive promises,” he said.
For the director of Roma (2018), the fact that the last six-year term stopped supporting cinema resulted in the growth of the television industry, which, although it generated jobs, there were many projects that were not consolidated because there were many people with little experience in charge of them. the same ones.
“In terms of industry it is something else. During the last six-year period, support for cinema was stopped and what grew was this television industry, of series, there was a lot of work, where there were many people who had jobs, but I also believe that, that many times, knowledge was lost, in the sense that very young people came in and suddenly they were given higher positions and then they are high positions where suddenly they do not have a very firm foundation to do their jobs and that can be seen in some results of some projects, which is independent of what I am talking about about the filmmakers,” he mentioned.
Cuarón added, in addition to the lack of support, film production in the past six years also “depended on the commercial moods of some companies,” which led to low production of works.
“It was also a phenomenon that depended on the commercial moods of some companies, the level of production last year dropped to an impressive percentage and in that way suddenly workers, from the established to the improvised, suddenly suffered the consequences and that It is due to the lack of a structure to create support, I mean as an industry,” he added.
Regarding the importance of cinema for a country, the director of Only with your partner (1991) recalled that just a decades-old tape made a Mexican destination, Manzanillo, Colima, become an international tourist spot.
“A film can have the impact; In the past there was only one movie called 10 the perfect woman (1979) suddenly turned a beach into an international tourist destination, that is, a film has an enormous projection,” he highlighted.
‘Disclaimer’, Cuarón’s arrival on television
About his new project, the miniseries Disclaimera psychological thriller starring fellow Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, Cuarón acknowledged that it was quite a challenge, especially in terms of duration, because he had never done television, therefore, he had to adapt his creative process to this work as if it were cinema.
“Actually, the challenge was more about duration than anything else, because, since the only thing I know how to do is film, the creative approach was the one I do in any film. And I wrote the script like I write any movie; Then the separation of chapters, I didn’t think about them beforehand, but rather it was writing the entire film, the entire series and then letting the narrative movements give the changes for each chapter, that’s how it happened naturally,” he explained.
Cuarón acknowledged that it was a difficult process for him and his team, in which Emmanuel el “Chivo” Lubezki and Bruno Delnonnel also participated as photographers, because he directed the 7 chapters that make up the series and since he shot them as if they were cinema, it was more hung up and delayed than what television programs do.
“And also, within the process, knowing where your piece fits in the context of 7 hours, right? In the context of two hours, I mean, I mean the emotional continuity, the atmospheric continuity. Yes, it is raining here and then I have to return four months later to this other location that happens at the same time, it has to be raining and it is cloudy or not cloudy,” he explained.
The series Disclaimer is based on the book of the same name by Renée Knight, which tells the story of acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett), who built her reputation by revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others.
When Ravenscroft receives a novel by an unknown author, she is horrified to realize that she is now the protagonist of a story that brings her darkest secrets to light. As Catherine races to discover the writer’s true identity, she is forced to confront her past before it destroys her life and her relationship with her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and her son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee).
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