QUESTION. How did the idea for this documentary come about?
ANSWER. It originated in a café, in front of San Gil, not far from where one of the first stable cinemas in the city was located. Vicky Calavia and I were discussing the 125th anniversary of the filming of Salida de misa de 12 de El Pilar and we said: hey, what if we call our friends and also do a performance, a recreation, a small tribute! That gradually grew until it became this documentary. It has been a very natural process. I am very happy with how everything turned out.
“This documentary was born in a café as a small idea that eventually grew into something much bigger.»
Q. From having coffee in front of El Pilar to making a documentary that has been chosen to open the VI Saraqusta Film Festival, so linked to historical cinema? How do you feel about the result?
A. It’s amazing for many reasons. Opening a festival is already important, but doing it in Zaragoza has enormous emotional value. Zaragoza and its history mean everything to me. I am from Zaragoza, my family lived here at that time… Thinking that my great-grandparents may have been part of that audience going to the cinema in the Plaza de la Seo touches you in a very special way. There is a very strong connection. Moreover, there is a divulgative dimension: I feel that we provide a perspective that brings this history closer to the public in a more accessible way. In the end, you contribute something, making knowledge that until now lived in doctoral theses and research articles accessible to the audience. My professors Amparo Martini and Agustín Sánchez Vidal were already very skilled at communicating, but the documentary reaches other people. And that fills me a lot.
Q. Is this one of your most personal works?
A. Very much so. I am increasingly interested in working on memory linked to Zaragoza through audiovisual mediums. In the end, it is what you are, and I experience this project very intensely.
Q. When did you discover that Zaragoza had been a pioneer in Spanish cinema?
A. At university. I studied Philosophy and Literature, and there I had contact with professors like Agustín Sánchez Vidal. I remember perfectly when, around 1996, Agustín Sánchez Vidal published his book about the Jimeno family. I went to the presentation, and it marked me. I then had a very strong connection with the Film Library of Zaragoza and its director, Ana Marquesán, with whom I learned to appreciate old cinema, archival images, and their cultural significance. Since then, the topic of Salida de misa has not left me.
Q. Does it surprise you that it is so little known outside of Aragón?
A. Not at all, knowing the sector. What I wonder is how many Zaragoza residents truly know it, because there are some, of course, but not as many as you might think. Culture needs to be communicated. There is a gap between academic knowledge and the general public. If we do not disseminate, it does not reach.
Q. What would you highlight about the cinematic heritage of Zaragoza?
A. It is enormous and very little known. And what almost no one knows is that the Film Library of Zaragoza has one of the largest film collections in Spain: Salida de misa, the works of the Coyne family, the Tramullas… They are some of the first filmed materials in the country that are preserved. We are talking about unique pieces that are heritage for all Zaragoza residents. And that is the nuance: there were likely more people filming, but the fact that it has been preserved is another story. That is an immense heritage that belongs to all Zaragoza residents. In two hundred years, it will be like having a Velázquez.
Q. What was Eduardo Gimeno like? What attracted you to his figure?
A. His vision. He was a great worker, a man with a remarkable instinct for business, with an impressive commercial vision. He quickly understood that the cinematograph was not only for exhibiting but also for recording. From the very first moment, he knew that the machine his son insisted on buying could yield profits. And then he thought: I will film the Zaragoza residents so they can see themselves and come buy their tickets to my booth. Artist? Perhaps not. Craftsman? Partially. But above all, he was a professional of spectacle and the audience with an intuition that any producer today would envy.
«Eduardo Gimeno filmed the Zaragoza residents so they could see themselves and buy their tickets at his booth. He was a visionary with a great commercial instinct. He understood that this machine was not only entertainment but also a business.»
Q. How has the documentation process been?
A. Very beautiful. We have worked with the documentarian Luis Rabanaque, and we immersed ourselves in newspaper archives, old photographs, and archives. The most interesting part is reconstructing Zaragoza of that time. It has been very exciting to discover the city; it is a very rewarding process. We went to the archive of the newspaper library, found photographs, plans with the exact location of the booths in the Plaza del Ángel, etc. I remember when the plan with those pavilions appeared: you can imagine those elegant, somewhat magical fair structures, and you think that they were here. Zaragoza looked towards France much more than we think, experiencing the same turbulent political moments as the rest of Europe, and even so, it knew how to see and enjoy it from the very first minute.
Q. Was there anything that broke your preconceptions during the process?
A. What impacted me the most was understanding how quickly the cinematograph triumphed here. The speed at which cinema developed in its early days and how Zaragoza joined in from the very start. Also understanding that it is a collective invention and that the city already had an audience ready for this kind of show. The Zaragoza audience was already sensitized because there was a rich cultural and spectacular life. We always look at the past with condescension, thinking, «poor people, who didn’t have electricity,» but in the end, everything was much more advanced than we think, and they had the same drive as we do to understand the world. I was also surprised by the number of photographers and entrepreneurs who ventured with their little cinematograph: some succeeded, others didn’t, but they were all there. I feel part of that loop that continues to this day.
Q. What was the most challenging aspect to resolve cinematically?
A. The biggest challenge was achieving balance. There are so many things to tell — the fin de siècle Zaragoza, how cinema arrived, who exhibited it, where — that you have to leave many things out to ensure the outcome is representative without being tedious. Then there is the material difficulty: the Plaza de la Seo of that time no longer exists, along with many other vanished spaces, like Calle San Miguel, El Coso… Making people imagine that there was a fair and Zaragoza residents excitedly watching moving images for the first time is quite a task. For that, we relied on illustrations by David Guirao, which not only add artistic value to the documentary but also help fill the gaps that archival material cannot cover.
«We always look at the past with condescension. Poor people, who didn’t have light… But that Zaragoza thought in modern terms and had the same drive as we do to understand the world.»
