I met Rodrigo in the park. It was supposed to be no more than a brief pause between texts. A photo safari for Fraulein F. A windbreak between Metal Urbain and Heilegedamm. Rodrigo bummed a cigarette and watched me take a photograph.
I circled off in search of more images but sloped back. Something about him intrigued me.We fell into conersation about cameras and filmmaking, politics,economies and ecologies.
Rodrigo is from Chile, he is making a film. The film Rodrigo wants to make is about water. He knows a lot about water. Rodrigo Avil is a cameraman who studied in Poland, loves Kieslowski and has just been hired for his first feature. The film that he wants to make has been invited to apply for funding from a prestigious European science body. The body wants more science but Rodrigo feels frustrated that they won’t or can’t see the science already implicit in the project. His cameras are in Poland and the German government has decided to postpone deciding whether he should be allowed to stay beyond the expiry of his permit. His lawyer tells him he has 24hrs.
Avil’s film intends to compare the stories of three Chilean villages and their struggle to secure fresh, uncontaminated, water. This is both a political as well as a scientific film but one that will also follow the poetics of the subject.
Rodrigo has lived here for ten years yet finds himself in a situation in which he has no control. The state has decided that no decision can be made until after he is legally obliged to return to Chile.
At time of posting there is no further news on this Kafkaesque situation.
Good Luck, Rodrigo.
“We would like to get back to that feeling you had when you first started making things, that sense of looking, observing.”
Rodrigo Avil
