Arami Ullón

El Tiempo Nublado (Cloudy Times), Arami Ullón (2014)

Arami Ullón is a Paraguayan screenwriter, film director and producer.  Her first feature documentary El Tiempo Nublado (Cloudy Times)premiered at Locarno, Karlovy Vary and Visions du Réel, where it won Best First Film.  Arami Ullón's debut feature was the first Paraguayan film ever to be submitted for the Foreign Language Academy Award.

In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Arami Ullón discusses distance, forgiveness, how social-political realities and shape our lives and her next project.

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FILMATIQUE:  El Tiempo Nublado (Cloudy Times) chronicles your own experience of having to leave a life you had built for yourself in Switzerland, in order to return to Paraguay and your ailing mother.  What inspired you to allow this very personal story of yours to be the subject of a film?

ARAMI ULLÓN:  I wasn't thinking that this would really become a film.  I was thinking that I needed a tool to face a situation I was refusing to face.  I suppose that my having worked in the audiovisual field since I was 15 years old made this the most natural tool.  In my fantasy, the use of the camera would become a filter that would put some space between me and the situation.  In my life (not thinking of a film) I wanted distance, the furthest possible. 

However, the presence of the camera did the opposite: it amplified every aspect of the situation.  It was late to escape; I was already in the middle of the process.  It can be said that a great unconsciousness sponsored the creation of a moving film.  Experimentation allowed me to find the language.  In a film financing system that requires elaborating everything before filming, before arriving at the real field of discovery, I hope to allow myself to experiment more often.

FLMTQ:  Though ill for some time, your mother's health begins deteriorating rapidly as she reaches the end of her life.  Did it take some convincing for your mother to agree to show so much of her own vulnerability on camera?  If so, what motivated her to be part of this project?

AU:  I didn't have to convince my mother.  We only talked about this once.  She states in front of the camera that this process would be one of forgiveness.  Parents and children always have a lot to forgive to each other, and at the same time nothing.  The details on this subject between us remain personal.

On the other hand, she spoke of being able to denounce the distress in which elderly people without economic resources live in Paraguay.

FLMTQ:  At one point you and your mother agree that you are making this film to "forgive" yourselves.  Can you elaborate on this idea?  For you, how is the act filmmaking a means of working through guilt and trauma?

AU:  It is, but any other means could help us work through emotional and psychological processes.  Making a movie is an extremely complex and exhausting process, so in my case, it's only worth it if it helps me understand something that really interests me intimately— if it doesn't, there are many other things I could try to do in life that are less distressing than crafting a film.

El Tiempo Nublado (Cloudy Times), Arami Ullón (2014)

FLMTQ:  The resonance of your film led to a salient revision in current Paraguayan health services, when the Department of Social Services in Asunción outlined a guide on how to care for seniors for the first time.  How much of your experience with your mother's care was political— insofar as it was the result of a broken system?  Can you reflect on the difference between the respective health services in Paraguay and where you currently reside, in Switzerland?

AU:  We tend to forget that our individual reality is the result of a system.  We tend to think that "we have our lives in our hands."  The thought that we can become whatever we want, that it only depends on us, is increasingly widespread. 

It is a strange thought.  In reality, there are very few things that are in our hands.  The meritocracy is causing great frustration and extreme individualism, a great isolation.  My mother and I are just an example of how social-political realities can shape our lives.

FLMTQ:  Can you discuss any new projects in the works?

AU:  Yes, I am working on an essay on identity and the sense of belonging.  It sounds abstract but in practice it is very concrete.  Living inside what is now known as Paraguayan territory, the Ayoreo, like most indigenous groups in the world, have lost their territory and fundamental elements that form their culture.  However there is something that resists.  I'm interested in that which resists despite the imminence of an absolutely homogenized world.  It's called: I Left Without A Closer Look and it's in pre-production.

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Interview by Marisa Winckowski

Guest Curator, Filmatique