The silence that remains (El silencio que queda)
Documentary / Fiction
Runtime: 71 min (Theatrical) / 55 min (Broadcast version)
Spanish Language
English subtitles
Original format: HD
Projection Format: DCP 2K 5.1 Color 1: 85: 1
Production: Amparo Garrido © 2019 Spain
An encounter with the overwhelming beauty that is revealed when engaging with the world with sight and hearing.
Production, direction and photography: Amparo Garrido
Edition: Ana Pozo
Editing Advisor: Julia Juaniz
Direct sound: Manu Prieto, José Carlos Sires y Esperanza Poveda
Sound post-production: Pecera Estudio
Color correction: Frodo García-Conde
Distribution and Sales: Teorema Films.
Juan Carlos was my dearest friend. Then he died very suddenly and left behind a huge silence. Afterwards, I found a newspaper clipping in my mailbox about a blind ornithologist who was passionate about birds. Juan Carlos had left it there for me. It served as my introduction to the spellbinding world of winged beings. Who would have thought that it would take a blind person to teach me how to see?
Director’s Notes
José Carlos Sires has been blind since he was 6 years old. He is an ornithologist and is able to identify about 200 species by his songs or calls. %22…It’s not that blind people have better hearing, but that sighted people don’t bother to exercise it…%22.
These are some of the quotes from an article that my partner and best friend left in my mailbox a few weeks before he died. Juan Carlos, who knew me well, knew that he was going to fascinate me going out to the field and closing my eyes. I like to think that he left me a commission, an encounter with the beauty that overwhelms us from two ways of approaching the world: looking and listening.
This project has led me to explore in greater depth some of the themes that have proven essential in my work as an artist, such as mechanisms of non-verbal communication, the relation between animal nature, blindness, and absence, the search for subjective truth, and the effects of blind chance and/or the unconscious.
The film is structured with the audio WhatsApps that José Carlos and I sent each other over these two years. Together with Ana, my editor, we have been editing this film that had no script, %22closing our eyes%22, listening to the material that was emerging throughout my travels, at first with José Carlos Sires, and later alone.
Trayectoria por festivales
2019 Festival de Málaga (Spain)
2019 Torino Film Festival (Italy)
2020 Doxa documentary film festival (Canada)
2020 Participation en SanFic 2020 (Chile)
2020 eDOC Festival Internacional de Cine Documental (Ecuador)
2020 Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) (Nepal)
2020 Suncine Environmental Film Festival (Spain) / Human Ecology Award
2021 International Wildlife Film Festival 44th IWFF (EEUU)
2021 Ecozine (España) / Premio Mejor Película Nacional
Director Bio
Amparo Garrido is a visual artist who works with photography and video. She has received important awards and held multiple national and international exhibitions. Her work is in important collections such as the MNCARS (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), among others. %22The silence that remains%22 is her first feature film.
Filmografía de la directora
2019 El silencio que queda. 71’ OPERA PRIMA
2009 Sobre la escucha. 5’01” VIDEOARTE
2009 Averiguando aceitunas. 3’35” VIDEOARTE
2008 Remanecer. 14’40” VIDEOARTE
2006 No digas nada. 2’39” VIDEOARTE
Presskit in english
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