[Gocamino] Camino movies

[Rosina]

Hello you all,

Three months ago the German/Austrian Camino movie “I’ll take you to the end of the world” was completed at Finisterra.  The full length movie, German/Austrian collaboration, was directed by the Austrian director Zhristinb Kabish and it deals with a father and daughter who begin their pilgrimage to Santiago in Salamanca and through it find their true personalities and the core of their relationship with one another.  Initial screenings of the movie in Germany have praised the movie highly, but general and international distribution will not take place until next year.

As we know, the nice French movie “Pilgrims” was finished and distributed last year. That one took place in the French Camino.

In a couple of days another movie-cum-documentary will also be finished in Finisterra. The movie, produced and directed by cineastes from Galicia takes a different approach. It is called “Synopsis of the Codex Calixtinus” and it is based on Book V with its references to female pilgrims. The director of the movie, Pablo Iglesias, has said that the significance of women pilgrims in the Camino has long been overlooked, and that his quasi-documentary means to correct such omission.  The two women highlighted in the Book are Gerberga de Flandes who made the pilgrimage in the XII century and is portrayed in the movie by the German model Tessa Bergmeier, and Hildegard Von Bingen who after making the pilgrimage four times went to the from France Camino a fifth=2
0time, secretly, as a companion to Americ Picaud and presumably ordered to do so by the successor to Pope Calixto II. Hildegard is played by the popular Spanish Galician Sara Casasnovas. Since the last scenes of the movie take place at the Sorbonne in Paris the actress is refreshing her French. She has also taken singing lessons to the theme song “Balada Ingenua” (innocent ballad…. more or less). The words of the song come from a poem that Federico Garcia Lorca dedicated to Santiago when the poet made the pilgrimage as a very young man. While the movie is virtually finished it is not expected to be released until next year.

Finally, the American actor/director Emilio Estevez will commence directing his father, Martin Sheen, in a couple of weeks in their Camino movie called simply “The Way”. You may remember that six years ago Mr. Sheen went to the Camino accompanied by a friend and his teenage grandson Taylor. The idea to make a movie about the pilgrimage seems to have germinated at the time.  Young Taylor also met the woman of his life then, (they will marry soon in the Santiago Cathedral).  The movie is about a rather bitter and self conflicted widower (Sheen) living in California that goes to Spain to identify and claim the body of a son from whom he was estranged.  After the son’s body is cremated in SJPP the father undertakes to walk the Camino spreading his son’s ashes as he walks.  He meets many and diverse people in the pilg
rimage and, principally, he gets to meet his own self. The focus of the movie appears to highlight the difference between “la vida que se vive y la vida que se elije” (the life in which one just goes along and the life which is chosen). Mr. Sheen’s home language was Spanish and he was brought up in it, and he and his wife brought up their own children making sure that they spoke Spanish as well as English.  This intimate knowledge of the language, and Mr. Sheen’s Spanish heritage should add a poignant touch to the portrayal of the Camino and its significance.

Lastly, movie producers are falling over each other, in Germany and elsewhere, trying to buy the movie rights to the Mega popular Camino book written by the German TV celebrity which has reportedly sold over ten million copies in several European languages. Its author has steadily refused to have a movie made out of his book and complains that what was a very personal and life-saving experience for him has become too commercialized.

I’ve a great many other Camino-related things to share, but they will have to wait until the next message.

Hugs!

Rosina