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hurrengoa
amama zuhaitz bat erortzen denean when a tree falls    When a tree falls in the middle of a wood and nobody is nearby to hear it, does the tree make any sound?

The sentence above is a philosophical doubt which is used to discuss reality, observation and perception. Many reflections have been made around this image. Albert Einstein asked his friend Niels Bohr about this: ¨Do you really think that the moon doesn’t exist if nobody looks at it?¨ And Bohr answered: ¨It doesn’t matter how much you try, you’d never be able to prove that the moon exists¨.

What happens when a farmstead which nobody looks after or cares for disappears?

Asier Altuna’s film “Amama” deals with this issue. The sound which a tree makes when it falls. Farmsteads and the people who live there. A way of life passed on over the centuries. The people who live in farmsteads give them meaning.
And if those people don’t pass their way of life on, has that experience ever existed?

Why do people make films?

To talk about memory and passing things on. To have a place to keep customs and ways of life which get lost. To graft new branches in cracks in fallen trees. To make space for new roots in the cracks. Cinema is a new language, but humans are new too. We shouldn’t forget that 80 grandmothers ago –that’s 80 amamas– we were in the Neolithic.

What happens to the drafts for film posters which don’t get used in the end?

We put them in the cover of the balde.