Tapes recorded from the 70s in analog format will be screened to bring them to life
It was the only time of the year that my mother let me drink Coke like there was no tomorrow. She had hair to the cup and was wearing a sweater that she itched, a gift from her grandmother. My sisters discussed what kind of jacket with shoulder pads they would wear on New Year's Eve and my father took out the annual Paternina blue band reservation. The crockery was that of Sargadelos, that of the visitors, and They dined on scallops au gratin—grilled, galvanized, riddled—and clams like at weddings. Not because of the abundance -which there was not- but because they were special days.
You took the box -three hundred times patched- from the attic where the baubles, tinsel and garlands were. And that string of lights that never worked and had a suspiciously dangerous electrical connection. And one of my uncles would grab the video camera and record everything. To my grandfather with the mandolin -he was a bus driver but in his spare time he played in a group- and my grandmother, who had been a singer in the first formation of the group Toxos e Froles -that's nothing-, with the bottle of anise from the monkey, scraping it with a fork.
"And one of my uncles would grab the video camera and record everything"
The next day the gifts arrived. Un Tente, the dream kitchen of Barbie from Mattel -with whom I discovered my taste for cooking for many years-, he designs your designs or the Trivial, which no one touched because it made us look terribly ignorant. There was a year that gave me a slight geek fever - I would not know until a decade later what that was - and I ordered the WWF ring with Hulk Hogan and the Star Crusade board game.
And then to sing, eat and drink. And to watch movies recorded on VHS. Like Superman or Star Wars - How we miss you, Constantino Romero.
Those video tapes that store our most retro moments now have a second life. As art, as an expression of cinema in the first person. But not only recordings of these parties: baptisms, communions, trips to the beach or experiences of any given day. And that is so because MOCA (Online Museum of Autobiographical Cinema) has scheduled a series of viewed in places throughout Galicia during these Christmas dates so that we remember what we were.
Those video tapes that store our most retro moments now have a second life
The facade of the town hall or the interior of a museum They will be the stage where tapes recorded since the 70s will be projected in analog format so that they come to life and remind us of our most retro stages.
Nadal in Super 8 (Christmas in Super 8) , which is how this series of screenings is titled, can be enjoyed at Floor 0 of the Gaiás Center Museum of the City of Culture of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela) from December 18 to January 6.
The same days will be projected on a screen in the market square of Lugo. In Allariz, in the Galician Museum of Xoguete, can be seen on December 19, 20, 26 and 27 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.; and in Cangas, the exhibition will be in the facade of the town hall the days December 22, 23, 29 and 30 from 6:00 p.m.
It's not just there. Through the MOCA website you can see other activities that they offer, such as conferences on autobiographical cinema or a sample of two dozen auteur films. And the archive of amateur films that give meaning to this exhibition: more than 15,000 meters of Super 8 film from three Galician families that bring us back to our younger selves. So that, to paraphrase the replicant from Blade Runner, the memories are not lost, like tears in the rain.