Spain in a Day

Two of Ballett Theater Basel’s dancer were selected to participate in the new film of Isabelle Coixet ” Spain In a Day”. The film was made with a international competition, where film makers were asked to send in raw video footage of Spanish people on the 24th of October, 2016. 22,600 films were sent in and 404 were chosen including Basel’s own, Ruben Dario Bañol filming Spanish dancing beauty, Tana Rosás Suñé. Ruben and Tana speaks with Armando about there experiences working on this project.

A word with the film maker Ruben Dario Bañol:

To make this film was a big challenge for me because one of the rules to participate in the project was that the material had to be raw, without any kind of editing. That was one of the reasons of why I almost don’t participate, because I always feel like if a have a talent for videos, is actually editing. Editing was “my thing“ but to film… to use the camera is another thing. In the filming moment I notice my lack of “studies“ and I do it all out of intuition. To send the footage without the possibility of fixing the mistakes, but in the end I did it and it was a good choice.

The main objective of the project was to show the life of Spanish people in the most real way possible, they wanted reality, and they wanted to escape from fake or “posing“ people and the best way to accomplish that was to not prepare anything at all, just to tell Tana ( the dancer subject) to be herself and ignore me completely. To forget the camera was following her all the time… Filming and trying to get the “magic” moments of her day without any second chance was exciting and at the same time annoying because I felt many times that I was missing amazing moments … for example having the camera out of focus… but after all it was a really nice and enriching experience.

The subject of the movie was to film the life of Spanish people the 24 of October 2015, so it was supposed to be easy to know what I wanted to do, film some of my Spanish colleagues at work. The problem was that there are a lot of them…so at first I though to film all of them. After speaking with some colleagues, I thought that less is more and I decided to focus on one person. Tana Rosás Suñé seemed perfect for me because in some aspects I think we are similar. She is beautiful, quirky, fun, and I feel like she has a lot to say without talking, you know one of these people that you look at and you can really see that they have a huge inner world. Without her this would not be possible.

That our video was selected among 22,600, one of the 404 final videos was really such a good feeling because to be honest I lost all hope. They really waited almost until the premiere day to confirm who was in the movie. The amazing feelings came when we started to see interviews of Isabel Coixet, the director of the movie, and she talked about the ballerina story as one of her favorites. She even said that she didn’t know if she could have filmed the ballerina material better than what it was. I was really in the clouds flying with happiness.

Now I am working on a video project where I want to put together my passions, dancing, drawing and filming, it is going to be about inspiration, I want to try to understand where it comes from and how we translate that into our final works through my own experience.

A word with Dancer, Tana Rosás Suñé:

One day Ruben came to me explaining the idea of this movie, and he said that he thought of filming me during one full day. At first I hesitated, because even though I have a silly character,I have my moments of insecurity. Even more in the public eye. I thought it was going to impossible to be selected. 22,600 videos applications, that is a lot. In the end I did it because I thought it would be interesting to see an image of a day of myself on the big screen. something great to show my family and friends back home. Also it was a challenge to ignore the camera… to not be acting even though I knew it was there. It was not easy.

I have to say that I had complete trust in Ruben. I know his work as a film maker and he made it super easy for me. I think he has a great talent. It was a nice experience and we had a lot of funny moments during this day. After a long period of waiting, we were pretty sure that the movie was not chosen, so the day that we’ve got the mail we couldn’t believe it.

I had a lot of different things in my mind: why did they chose a day from me? because a day of Tana it’s such a normal day,I am not special at all, so it was really a surprise. Then I thought…which part did they choose? Am I am going to be looking terrible or saying something strange? is it gonna be just a second? I had lots of emotions going on, but i was happy.Also for Ruben because to be in a movie of Isabel Coixet, such a recognized director, it is an amazing achievement.