Coming to Anthology Film Archives tomorrow, Friday, February 13: COAST OF DEATH
Lois Patiño’s meditation on a legendary Galician coastal region made its debut at Locarno in 2013, where it picked up the award for Best Emerging Director. Other fest appearances included the New York Film Festival, True/False, Vancouver, Montreal, Tallinn, Jihlava, Rotterdam, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Jeonju, Valdivia, and Play-Doc, among several others.
The titular area, Costa da Morta – or, in Galician, Fisterra, translated as “end of the world” – gained its ominous name from its dangerous, rocky coastline which has proven the demise of countless ships since Roman times. Paying reverence to the grandeur and power of nature, Patiño carefully constructs his frame to highlight this landscape in a series of static long shots, typically filmed from above. While people are sometimes absent from these stunning, distant tableaux, where they are present offers an added, compelling layer to this portrait of a place, an often humorous, intimate aural counterpoint that reminds the viewer of the interactions of man and nature, even when the latter dwarfs the former. Beyond scenes of loggers felling trees or fishermen and women retrieving barnacles or other sealife, other everyday scenes play out, with local residents discussing the history of the coast, both legendary and recent. The result is a beautifully executed multivalent essay film that immerses the viewer in a distinct seaside land.
what (not) to doc 