観 KAN

Screenplay: Anna Dot and Pol Aregall
With the complicity of Naomi Kawase
Sound design: Diego Pedragosa
Color: Xavier Pérez
Graphic design: Esteve Padilla

Synopsis

In 2024, Naomi Kawase spent a few days in Barcelona acting in Emergency Exit, by Lluís Miñarro. Pol Aregall filmed her on his own, between the set and the Filmoteca de Catalunya, with a camera that was not the one used for filming. She knew where each camera was at all times.

観 KAN is what remains of those days. A voice-over arrives later, when the images already exist, and questions them: what do you need to know to build a role. The answer does not come in words.

Direction note

I recorded within a shoot that wasn’t mine, without knowing what I was doing with it. For months I had the material on the table without any film.

What remained for me was a very simple observation, and the film does nothing more than support it: it never escapes where the objective is. What I had recorded was not their intimacy. It was a way of being in front of a camera that only has someone who has spent their life behind it.

I asked Anna Dot for a voice that would search for the meaning of all that. The voice and the editing have been built against each other.

観 means to look carefully. It is the kanji that Naomi wrote by hand for us.

This film has been possible thanks to the generosity of Lluís Miñarro, who allowed these images to be recorded during the filming of his film. Thanks to Yonay Boix and all the people who have made it possible.