Full piece

Synopsis

Ωmenahje is an essayistic micro short film that reimagines iconic cinema scenes in the streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. The piece has no dialogue, using only a voice-over that reflects baroquely on the current state of cinema.

The story begins with Buster Keaton, who becomes the killer from Psycho, who fights the woman from Kill Bill (Kiddo), who in turn transforms into The Little Mermaid; all of them interacting sequentially in settings that mix the historical with the contemporary.

The action unfolds in falsely medieval plazas and alleyways where these characters star in violent and poetic scenes in slow motion. The voice-over, meanwhile, raises questions about the current state of cinema: the absence of avant-gardes, the lack of auteurs who challenge conventions and genres, and the survival of this craft as an art form in the era of digital, AI, and streaming platforms.

Director’s note

Ωmenahje is three minutes long and was born from a question that has been turning in my head for a while: is there anything left of cinema, or do we only have the memory of cinema? Every time I walk into a theater or open a streaming platform, I get the feeling I’m watching the same thing under different names (and in a degenerate way). The avant-gardes ended, or became decorative, or were swallowed by the algorithm. The auteurs who in another era would have broken something now feed catalogs. And meanwhile we keep making films (we try to make them), like someone praying in a dead language no one understands anymore.

I wanted to answer that question without answering it. Instead of writing an essay, I went out to the alleyways of the Gothic Quarter, those falsely medieval plazas where history blurs with the set, and I put together a small homage — or rather, a small offering — gathering scenes that had marked me. Buster Keaton becomes the killer from Psycho, who faces Kiddo from Kill Bill, who transforms into The Little Mermaid, all in slow motion and without a single line of dialogue. Only a voice-over that reflects, perhaps too much, on what we’re watching.

I don’t know if Ωmenahje is a farewell or an act of faith. Probably both. Three minutes aren’t enough to save anything, or say anything, but they are enough to leave a record that someone was still watching.

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