The oldest plant in the world lives in the Spanish island of Tabarca, four kilometers in a straight line from the Alicante coast of Santa Pola, is Posidonia and has been the subject of a documentary that its author, Adam aliaga, premiered this Tuesday at Valladolid International Film Week (Seminci).
Aliaga (Alicante, 1969) photographed the flowering of this plant which saw the racking of an island which happens to have thousands of inhabitants in summer a little more than ten in winter, a story that begins as a documentary but to which has been added fantasy, explained to Efe the director.
“It’s a more ecological and poetic approach to what the island is, to the sensation it conveys,” he explains. this filmmaker whose work has been altered by the pandemic, although he admits that it helped him delve into one of the film’s goals, “to know what would happen to the island if humans disappeared“.
The film, which competes at the Seminci for the Green Spike (environmental values), shows the passage of the seasons and how the changes affect Posidonia, how it moves, what sounds it makes, while teaching the “vital impulses” of the island where this plant, which “many believe to be an alga”, serves as a symbolic element to articulate the speech.
“Posidonia accumulates, protects the island and provides shelter. Fish, corals, crustaceans live there … if you clean up Posidonia beaches for the tourists to come, you ignore the natural protections ”, he defends himself.
Aliaga acknowledges that although he does not intend to deliver a speech of durability, the film deals with issues such as sustainable tourism and the “vicious cycle” involved in sustaining what is declared to be marine reserve at the same time that thousands of tourists are received every summer precisely because of the natural wealth of this enclave.
To give the documentary the look “poetic”, the scenario is presented as “a kind of logbook of a castaway, of a filmmaker”, since is the director who stars in the story the one that explains the characteristics of posidonia through a voice-over.
It is a plant that defends itself against plastics by expelling a kind of thread called balls of Neptune, “cleans itself and defends itself”, which has helped make it one of the oldest species on the planet.
The director hopes his film and the rest competing for the Green Spike represent another step “in the paradigm shift that we are immersed as a society ”, giving in this case the importance that a“ very intelligent ”living being deserves.
On the island of Tabarca, which was already a filming space for Aliaga in “Fish bone”, the director sees “these dimensional doors that can transport you to another universe or to another time”, a space without vehicles due to its small size (it is the least populated island in the Mediterranean), and or “you feel like you’re alone”.
In addition to “Posidonia”, the director from Alicante presents the short film at the Valladolid festival “The cage”, who filmed with her parents shortly before her father died to record her relationship with them, showing a typical Sunday day when they went to the field to eat paella.
“It’s almost a family album,” says Aliaga, who wants it to serve as a tribute to his father and he is happy that you are present in ValladolidHe studied in the city and presented his first documentary at the 51st Seminci (2005) with his parents. EFE