Camagroga
Alfonso Amador
Old-style farming families are an endangered species. Their physiognomy, gestures and postures, however, are shaped by an unfaltering pride.
Camagroga
Camagroga
Alfonso Amador
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Spain
2019
111 minutes
Catalan,
Spanish
Subtitles:
English
The Huerta Valenciana is a unique cultural landscape of fields and plantations. For generations this region, mainly planted with perennially rotating crops of tigernuts, artichokes and onions, was regarded as the vegetable garden of Spain. “Camagroga” is a filmic elegy about peasant pride and how it is inscribed in the physiognomies, gestures and postures of the people behind these agricultural products.
Tardor, as autumn is called in the Valencian regional language, is the season when the tigernut straw is burned on the fields to make the winter harvest of the nut-sized bulbs easier. Antonio Ramon and his daughter Inma run a farm of just under four hectares north of Valencia – hardly a profitable size nowadays. And yet they apply a surfeit of care and traditional knowledge to their products, seemingly following the impulses of their vegetative nerve system rather than a deliberate programme. Ever since their fields were also identified as prime real estate in the development plan of the expanding provincial capital, however, they have known that the battle zone has already reached their barn door.
Credits
Director
Alfonso Amador
Script
Alfonso Amador
Cinematographer
Alfonso Amador
Editor
Sergi Dies
Producer
Xavier Crespo, Alfonso Amador
Sound
Jorge Salvà, José Serrador
Score
Carles Dènia, Pep Gimeno, Miquel Gil
Nominated for:
Prize of the Interreligious Jury,
FIPRESCI Prize
