OPEN-PIT
(CIELO ABIERTO)
a film by Felipe Esparza Pérez
FEATURE PRESENTATION
JUNE 1, 2024 • 4:00 PM
@ THE BUS STOP THEATRE
(2203 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX)
2023 / PERU, FRANCE / 65 mins
In Spanish with English subtitles
In a house nestled within the Peruvian Andes, a father and son recede into a transient relationship. The father labours ceaselessly each day under the open blue sky, his leathery hands hammering fissures into the colossal formation of volcanic rock to break off gleaming white slabs. The son spends hour after hour in a sumptuous cathedral filled with iconography, painstakingly employing all manner of photographic technology to map a 3D, virtual simulacrum of its interior. The sparse dialogue gives way to an immersive soundscape echoing the rhythms of human-made materials colliding with the natural and sacred, in a place gripped by a colonial and industrial past. A succinct but profound sojourn into slow cinema, Felipe Esparza Pérez’s debut feature contemplates the sublime and what we create in its image. —Kelly Li
TRAILER
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Felipe Esparza Pérez
Felipe Esparza Pérez (1985. Talara, Peru) graduated with a master's degree from Centro de la Imagen (Lima) and Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains (France). His work creates dynamic links and tensions between film and visual arts, with a strong interest in rituals, faith and its symbolic derivations and the relationship between image and time, image and history, and image and truth. His work has been shown in Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin -New Cinema and Contemporary Art, Guangzhou Image Triennial (China), Shangyuang Museum of Contemporary Art (Pekín), Biennale Videobrasil (Sao Paulo), Los Angeles Film Forum, FIVA Videoart Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Curtocircuíto, Moscow IFF, Torino IFF, Beijing BIFF, among others. He is currently a fellow at the Film Study Center at Harvard University.