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, Peru) gained his master’s degree in Contemporary Photography at the Centro de la Imagen in Lima in 2016. Two years later, he won Best Film at the National competition of the 2018 Lima Independiente International Film Festival. Esparza Pérez creates dynamic links and tensions between cinema, plastic arts and video creations, exploring themes such as nature, spirituality and its symbolic derivatives, and the relationship between image and time, image and history, and image and truth. His works have been shown both nationally and internationally, including at La Gaîté-Lyrique (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Buenos Aires Video Art Festival and IFFR. Open-Pit is his feature-length debut.