Contactos, Paulino Viota (1970): una poética del vacío

Abstract

Es imposible recoger toda la dimensión fílmica de Contactos si no atendemos al contexto histórico-social en el que se gestó. El primer largometraje del santanderino, Paulino Viota, es un fiel reflejo del aire de los tiempos en los que la opresión franquista era tan palpable en la vida cotidiana que el cine se convertía en un espacio subterráneo por donde moverse para gritar en silencio. Esta relación especular entre las imágenes de Viota y la realidad del momento tiene una feliz confluencia en la apelación activa al espectador de la época.

It is impossible to gather together the whole film dimension of Contactos without bearing in mind the historical-social context in which is came about. The first full-length film by Santander-born Paulino Viota faithfully reflects the atmosphere of the times in which Francoist oppression was so obvious in daily life that cinema became an underground space in which to move about so as to be able to shout in silence. This specular relationship between Viota's images and the reality of the moment has a happy confluence in the active appeal to the spectator of the period. To use the words of Wajcman, in reference to Shoah’s spectator-witness, we could endorse them when, in psychoanalytical terms, it is said that he becomes manifest as of his involvement in the act of watching: “His passage to the act could be expressed in the step taken from being to becoming […] it is not being a spectator, it is becoming, that is, consenting, subjectivising this passage where the spectator becomes a deliberate watcher in that place that is assigned to each person from where he or she is to witness the film"1. Thus, the spectator makes a committed gesture in the act of watching, fostered by the sequence-shots of Viota's film, in which the fact that real time is equal to film time produces a feeling of reality