The main character, Gabriela, is looking for her dog Porro, a very concrete pretext for going from place to place and gleaning everyday scenes. How did the project come about? Where does Volver a recorrer las mismas calles take place? What was it that interested you about the territory you travelled through?
I wanted to film dogs, because I love them. It all stems from there. In Chile there is a huge number of stray dogs. They are everywhere. Also, I wanted to try to put together a story where the beauty of the neighborhoods inhabited by these stray dogs, their corners, their passages, the sun that hits in the afternoon and the people, the neighbors, would appear. The search for a lost dog is exactly that, a pretext to go in search of those images. I wanted to shoot in my grandmother’s neighborhood, where I have spent most of my life, but we live in different cities and it was very difficult to film there, so we decided to shoot in the neighborhood of the producer of the film, Mariana, called “San Ramón”. We couldn’t shoot just anywhere, the feeling of belonging was very important to be able to develop with freedom, affection and respect, and to transmit that in the images.
The main character returns to this neighborhood with a touch of nostalgia and can’t find her dog. Why this figure of the dog, more precisely of a stray dog? What does it symbolize?
The stray dog in Chile is a huge symbol. In fact, during the popular revolt of 2019, one of the most representative figures of this movement was a stray dog. The “negro matapacos” (“black copkiller”) represented the people, their strength and their loyalty. And, in general, that’s what stray dogs mean to me, they accompany you and give themselves completely to you with just a caress, it’s very overwhelming. In the friendship that Juana gives to Gabriela, the company she keeps her throughout the day, this is also expressed.
The camera adopts the dog’s wanderings, searching the street, and intrudes on interiors. The streets are even filmed at dog’s height. Why and how do you construct this point of view?
I wanted to film the beauty of the corners. I wanted to give myself the freedom to take the camera for a walk, no matter where, that it could get lost and wander, without hurry, unlike the protagonists, who have a purpose, a place to get to. So that’s where this point of view came up, this parallel story, so to speak, that of the dogs.
The film moves very freely, escaping any narrative stakes or scenarios, the search for the lost dog simply being like an impetus. What was your editing method?
This is a very entertaining question, because the editing was like being a lost dog. We had to look for many paths, because there were many possibilities. Assembling and disassembling repeatedly. I worked with more people, in a first stage we edited with Linda Cartes, then with Valeria Hernández and Carolina Moscoso. Between all of us we discovered a sense and style of narration, since the story could be told in many orders and forms. I wanted the material of the dogs’ point of view to have the same relevance as the narrative material, more typical of fiction, not to be subordinated to it, but on the contrary, to allow it to be a point of escape from what a linear story tries to tell, to distract us from that and take us to new places, that was one of the main tasks of the editing.
Volver a recorrer las mismas calles is bursting colors. How did you work with Niles Attalah on colour grading?
I wanted the film to feel like a warm spring afternoon. That’s why my proposal was to liven up the colors a lot, here Diego Seye, the colorist of Diluvio, did a beautiful job, under the supervision of Niles Attalah, and the coordination of Coni Maldonado, a great team.
As with the sound design we worked on with Mercedes Gaviria, the idea was to keep the neighborhood as alive as possible, highlighting the sounds that one would only hear if one were silent and paying close attention, such as the wind through the leaves, the puddles of water, the flapping of a bird.
Interview by Claire Lasolle
