Flamenco Workshop
( Taller de flamenco )

Alfonso Camacho
2013 - 69 min - DV - Couleur et Noir & blanc - Espagne

Seville (Spain), San Luis neighborhood. Between February through May 2009, the last months prior to the closure of a self-managed squatter social centre in an abandoned hat factory, a camera tries to film a weekly flamenco singing workshop. That process becomes a frustrated search, a series of tests with every variation of flamenco singing that is taught and learned: farrucas, soleares, seguiriyas, tarantos, bulerías, granaínas, alegrías and tientos-tangos. The result is a film as incomplete and truncated as the workshop and the physical space it depicts –both of them are projects still in construction, unfinished, and frustrated. It’s also a film that tries to keep the same connection with flamenco the characters have: it makes an unstylish portrait, shredding its solemnity, thus suggesting a vindication of its current validity and an extension of its possible ranges.