Paula Ortiz (Zaragoza, 45 years old) has many of the women ahead of their time that she portrays in her films. It’s passionate like The bride, deep as Teresabold as The red virgin. Daughter of high school teachers and granddaughter of “people from the countryside of Teruel”, her world is that of words and ideas. So the red carpets are still a bit difficult. Because if you are a director, sometimes, there is more talk about your dress than about your cinema. And yours has a lot to say. In it, it shows the repression of women throughout history. Also, its contradictions. Because, in addition to the weight of aesthetic pressure and resignations, we suffer guilt. “It represses us much more than men,” he acknowledges.
Ask. What then do we do with the guilt of being away from your son today?
Answer. I can’t get that one off… When I’m in Madrid working, the thought of “I should be in Zaragoza with him” doesn’t go away. I have done real savages! Coming back and forth every day for dinner or sleeping at home in the middle of a movie. We want to become empowered women, but there are contradictions.
P. Yeah? Which is it?
R. Well, it is impossible to aspire to make great films, but also want to sleep with my son in Zaragoza every day. I have colleagues who, like me, are from abroad and stay in Madrid to rest, but guilt takes away our physical and intellectual strength.
P. Why isn’t MeToo taking off in Spanish cinema?
R. It’s complicated… Violence needs to be made visible, but in an impeccable way so as not to distort. Our industry, being media, sometimes does not go through the establishments it should. It has to be subject to the judicial system, not just the press and social networks. A very strong moral responsibility is needed because we are talking about a wound that has happened to all of us gradually.
P. Gradually?
R. Yes, because to different degrees, violence is based on the same thing. It is an exercise of power, from rape to threats or coercion. You have had to be a cloistered nun to not experience a situation like this in any work environment. It’s painful, but in the end, it’s all true at the same time. On the one hand, I want to recognize the good men in my life (my father, my brother, my partners…), although I also want to denounce those who have attacked my self-esteem.
P. Have you suffered any type of violence or abuse?
R. Mmm, situations of abuse that had to do with that imposition of male power over female power. And that builds your personality when you are young and you have to recover.
P. Was it at work?
R. Yes, a man once told me: “If you don’t do this and go through here, you won’t get that.” And so it was. I didn’t do A, because B didn’t happen.
P. A sexual imposition?
R. Yes… (Pauses). This has happened and happens. As long as we cannot go to the center of power and exercise it without being questioned and punished, this structural sexual violence will not stop.
“MeToo requires a very strong moral responsibility because it is a wound that has happened to all of us.”
P. We are punished for being ambitious, it is a value for them.
R. That is why the figure of Queen Letizia is so attractive to me. She has entered a center of power like the monarchy, but she is judged very harshly for being there, despite the intelligence she emanates. If you compare the criticism and comments that the king receives with those she endures, occupying the same position, you see the double standard.
P. If you doubt, the queen has a movie.
R. I would love to do it! One day I have to meet her, and we also share several last names (Laughs).
“Queen Letizia is judged very harshly for being in a center of power, much more so than the king.”
P. As a filmmaker, have you also felt that double standard?
R. In my first short I had to scream so that they would pay attention to me. I had been preparing it for years, but I had a male team that I considered knew more than me. With 30 kilos more, taller, with a beard, glasses and an Iron Maiden t-shirt, he wouldn’t have had to justify the decisions he made so much.
P. And now?
R. When I have written texts by Lorca, Santa Teresa or Hemingway, the press or some producers ask me: “How dare you?” And I think: “And why not?” I have also been told at times that I am “pretentious.” And I answer: “Well yes, the truth is that I intend to.” (Series).
“There is distrust in giving women big projects. “We are not a genre, we are half of the world’s creativity”
P. She says she would like to make a feature film about the center of power from the feminine. In what sense?
R. Yes, it’s an obsession. Because we live in a civilization based on a story that says that if women go to the center of power they unleash evil. These are the stories of Eve and Pandora. We have to undo that scheme. If a woman goes to the center of political, religious, scientific, artistic, spiritual power… she has to exercise it.
P. But it costs.
R. Because, culturally, there is distrust in giving women big projects. In cinema, as long as we move in the sphere of the feminine, the intimate, the delicate, the marginal, fine. But what if we also want to talk about the Third World War? Films directed by women are not a film genre, we are half of the world’s creativity.
P. Your movie The red virgin It is nominated for the Goya in nine nominations. Why were you surprised?
R. Because last year I did Teresa and I didn’t get any nominations. It is true that they were very different films, but I feel that I am the same director, I have the same team and I follow the same philosophy. That day I didn’t wear makeup and I had to go to the Academy with a painting done because I wasn’t expecting it.
P. How much do philias and phobias weigh among academics?
R. In the end, the Academy reflects currents of sensitivity. Sometimes, voting is done for reasons that are more emotional and less reflective than it may seem. Also, we vote on what has been voted before by tradition and that affects women. In the Enlightenment, academies were avant-garde places to propose and advance. Art must be uncomfortable and cannot be white. It doesn’t do us creators any good to be placed in white.
At the Goya, we are affected by whether people vote based on tradition or whether they put us in the white spot.”
P. How do you handle red carpets?
R. Bad… I don’t understand making a movie for six years and having it come down to a tweet or a comment about my dress. Is my media time for me to count? look And do you give my partner who is in a suit time to talk about his film? I understand that awards are designed to perpetuate films, but I find it difficult. It’s an exaggeration, although, it can’t be that my dress is worth more than what I have charged!
P. The presence of influencers At galas and festivals it doesn’t help, right?
R. If they connect with people, I am no one to judge it, but I am concerned about superficiality and trivialization. There is influencers who ask on red carpets who haven’t even seen the movies or know what they’re about. I would never go to a medical conference.
P. Does criticism affect you a lot?
R. I try not to read them out of discipline, I do it when time passes. I don’t have X because I realized that, without meaning to, I only focused on the negative. When there is something true in criticism, it hurts, but you know it is true.
There are ‘influencers’ on the red carpets who have not seen the movies”
P. In The red virginAurora raises her daughter Hildegart to be the woman of the future. However, when he sees that she is free, he kills her. What other contradictions does feminism have?
R. Many, we talked about it at the beginning. The fight between us is incomprehensible, but the dimension of women’s evil cannot be denied. Women are miserable beings too, not just heroines. There are acts of violence by women towards other women. You have to be able to say it and that doesn’t make you less feminist, but rather it is a way to clean up that pattern.
P. His film talks, above all, about fanaticism… The trend of these times.
R. To be a fanatic is not to question. For example, the Trumpism has made his followers uncritical. When I prepared the film, I read political speeches and news from the Second Republic and they expressed their ideas better, with more depth, which allowed them to understand the person opposite them. Now everything is a broad brush and this generates more fans.
P. Who are you going to think of if you win the Goya for best direction?
R. In my parents, but above all, in my son Leo, who appears 10 seconds in The red virgin singing a verse The International: “It is the end of oppression!”