Malpaís

On January 18, 2022, I was filming at an altitude of 4,800 meters on the summit of the Cumbal volcano in southern Colombia.
My biologist friend and I had noticed scratches on some huge rocks along the way. Our guide, a native of the Quillasingas indigenous people, explained that, over time and with seismic movements, stones that had previously stuck together moved, and their movement caused friction like scratching, leaving these marks on their surface.
On this volcano, I thought of the images imprinted on my film, as if light and time were entering with their claws to caress the filmic surface, as if the ghosts of time were lodged on the material layers of celluloid.
This experience led me to build the Malpaís project. In this project, the territory is a character. My desire to shoot this film in volcanic territory was confirmed when I discovered these desert plains covered in lichens and ferns, with their dried-up lava flows and steep, wild terrain.
Malpaís was born of a desire to put the earth, the body and matter at the center. I’m interested in decentering the human from the theme of myth and popular folklore, while claiming the triumph of life in its free, contradictory, and fragmented forms. The film thus proposes a return to the hybrid, the magical and the ancestral.