Upon receiving the news of the death of Carlos Pastor I felt a whiplash in my heart: destiny, injustice and pain, enormous pain. It had been a while since our last conversation. We talked about how to find a path to production for the “Lost Destination” project. We agreed to do it in the Vilellathe town of the Priory that he had chosen after closing the house of Pedreguer.
After seeing him with his family and friends in Tarragona, I crossed off a call in the agenda: visit Carles. But I underlined the second half of the entry: channeling “Lost Destiny.” Carles has been for me, and for many of us who knew him, a great friend, a fantastic guy and a filmmaker from head to toe. One of the pillars of Valencian cinema that, —with the contribution of so many colleagues—, rose against all odds in the 80s and 90s.
I had met him coinciding in the places where the movida circulated in the second half of the 70s and the first 80s. He had made his particular entrance in the cinema and in the audiovisual walking through the Barcelona of the gauche divine from the hand of Xavier Marshal. From that experience, her first short film, “Makoki”, was born. He had brought from Barcelona a point of modernity, of cosmopolitanism, which made him unique and different.
In the 1990s, when Canal 9 was already a reality and a frustrated hope for many, as director of the Filmoteca I set up, —with the help of the SGAE and the UIMP—, the School of Screenwriters from which the FIA and in which EVA was also born, which would later become EAVE, the writers’ association.
With Pepe Cano, Henry Navarro Y Tony CanetCarles was a permanent help in the creation of the school and in its management for almost twenty years.
The conversation with him was an inexhaustible source of inspiration, almost all the adventures born in the FIA had been discussed before in the courtyard of the Palau de Pineda. we were talking about frank daniel and his theory of the paradigm of the eight sequences, of the idea of the concept that he defended in the classrooms of the FIA Joseph Louis Borau or from the “bleach resistant theory” of Lola Salvador Y Manolo Matjí.
He was moved by enthusiasm, with a wonderful energy to overcome obstacles and an unerring sense of image and verisimilitude. Verisimilitude does not refer to common reality but to its aesthetic reality, to an interpretation of the world that ranged from the comedy side of “modern” life to the spirituality of Vipassana or Ayauasca.
In 2004, he asked me to rewrite the script for “Camp de Maduixes”, a TV movie he was preparing for TV3 and Channel 9. He didn’t like the version he had and we completely rewrote the script. It was a delight to work together, with an amazing epilogue. As a director, he was always aware that the end of each sequence created in the viewer the need to jump to the next, he did not care about the three acts or the “impulses” of Linda Seger: all sequences had to end “pointed”. He was an incorruptible guardian of transitions.
They mattered to him so much that at the editing table he “discarded” a few extra minutes and the material shot fell short. Once the edition was over, seven more minutes had to be shot. But the cast had already dispersed and we could only count on four of the actors. The new action had to happen all in the hospital where they have taken the boy who has been intoxicated in a rave with a hallucinogenic “maduixa”.
“Carles, you take a part of my heart and many others and the commitment, hopefully lucky, to dedicate the film you dreamed of as ‘Lost Destination'”
I was on vacation at Oliva beach. Every morning, I sat on the terrace of a bar and discussed on the phone with Carles the material that he had sent him the previous afternoon. On the third day, the owner of the bar told me that she had paid for the drinks: they couldn’t charge the scriptwriter who made them feel so many emotions with that wonderful series that was Hospital Central. When I told Carles we burst out laughing.
The story made sense. The cinema we made in those years, a prodigious decade of culture in Valencia, lacked the means and support to give it wings and go out and sell what we made. It was so hard to find our audience!
Last Saturday, when I approached the window in the funeral home from which Carles could be seen with a serene face and total concentration, typical of the consummate meditator that he was, I had the feeling that I was invoking an image to, as I would say bob dylan“knocking on the heaven doors”.
It was plausible to think that the image he should be looking at would be the last shot of the new version of “Lost Destination”. I felt the need to give us a hug like so many times so many others who were and will no longer be. Carles, you take a part of my heart and many others and others and the commitment, hopefully lucky, to dedicate the film you dreamed of as “Lost Destination”. There’s a seat for you on opening day.
Rest in peace, dear Sefer..