cinema no pátio: february, by kamen kalev

It is not about the telluric force of the mountains or zombie attacks, but perhaps about something else: ways that cinema finds to represent something that is felt, beyond what the senses apprehend. This year’s Cinema no Pátio presents four proposals that are, torn between the natural and the metaphors, between landscape and revelations. February (Kamen Kalev, 2021) tells us about the poetics of time and rituals in time; Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2022), of the unfathomable mysteries of existence (where the spectator becomes a listener); Happy as Lazarus (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018) of isolation, kindness and exploitation; and Thirty Souls (Diana Toucedo, 2019), of oblivion and death as a passage.
por eduardo brito

february
kamel kalev · bulgaria · 2020 · drama · 125’ · m/12
with ivan nalbantov, lachezar dimitrov, kolyo dobrev, maria velichkova e dimitar radoinovz

Enriched with texts by Albert Camus and Boris Hristov, February narrates three periods in the life of Petar, a Bulgarian shepherd. The course of his monotonous life seems to be written beforehand and completely without meaning. However, there is an invisible force within him that, in a mysterious way, pushes him forward, towards death. Paying homage to the simplicity of human existence, the film explores the timelessness of nature and how it can lead us to a mystical elevation. Kalev signs a humanistic and, at the same time, environmentally focused work. It is as if we enter an “endless corridor where all our ancestors appear in a row”, tracing the poetic path of someone who accepts his destiny without regrets.