Jordi Esteva (Barcelona, 1951) has been traveling for more than half a century but it bothers him to be called a traveler. For the Barcelona filmmaker, getting to know other worlds has to do with taking a break, with staying in the places. “I don't like to go from one place to another, I like to blend into those other worlds,” he says.
With a nomadic soul since he fled from the gray and conservative tedium of Franco's Spain as a child, the Barcelona writer and filmmaker has delved into distant realities for more than five decades to discover and recount vanishing realities.
For the first time, the Filmoteca de Catalunya presents a cycle on his complete filmography, shot in remote areas of the jungle of the Ivory Coast or the island of Socotra, which begins this Friday, February 10 (5:00 p.m.) with the premiere of a documentary about the myths and legends of the Colombian Chocó and continues on Wednesday the 15th with the screening of three films and a subsequent discussion with the author. Esteva receives La Vanguardia at her house in Barcelona and warns as soon as it starts: "I'm tired of traveling."
Are you no longer interested in the world you see?
Several things come together. I'm writing a new book, I'm getting older, and getting older brings with it a loss of curiosity. Then the world has changed a lot and the countries that interest me have many problems. Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria... What has always interested me is looking for worlds that are disappearing, ancient practices, remote places or ancient civilizations that are fading... When I was little I dreamed of mythical names: Timbuktu, Samarkand... but I don't know you can go like the city of Mali or Samarkand now it is a kind of Florence. I'm not saying that everything in the past was better, just that now nothing drives me to travel.
He has turned 70, more than half a century traveling.
The trips are just over. Years ago in Sudan I traveled across the desert in trucks, holding bags of cement, in India I traversed the country in third class wagons, in Socotra I walked through mountains 30 kilometers a day. I no longer have that strength. Fate has to call me. What do you want me to do in Paris? Fight with some Japanese to see the Mona Lisa? That doesn't interest me.
His nomadic soul is born in a library and generates an escape.
I am from the year 51 and I lived in a closed and gray society, of repression, of a school of priests or false friends, so adventures made me dream. The books or the movies that some gypsies brought to the town for the summer. Those stories of Sinbad, of the wonders of the world... He said: one day I will leave and you will not see me anymore.
His first trip was to Morocco, at the age of 17. What would you say to that Jordi Esteva who was beginning to discover the world?
I would tell him not to worry, everything will be fine. That she has not betrayed her dreams. Let her continue down that path, because she's not going to betray what he wants to do.
In the middle of the hippie era he went to India, but he was not caught. Instead, he was captivated by Islam.
I was fascinated by Iran, the Zagros mountains, which seem to be made of frozen lava, the poetry, the gardens, the architecture... it fascinated me. Religions do not interest me at all, besides the interpretations of religion are diverse and you can find from very beautiful visions to other repressive ones, but that world amazed me. India I found too baroque for me. I longed for the austerity of Iran, the light, the gloom, drinking tea under some trees with people, something spiritual.
In Egypt, he lived in an oasis for five years, until the police detained him at gunpoint and expelled him from the country. Is it the worst memory of him?
It was the worst moment of my life. One before and one after. I felt very free and suddenly I realized that I was not. The first night I thought they were wrong and silly, but when I saw the bars projected on the wall, like a Nosferatu movie, I was shocked; I panic. There were 31 people in that cell with mats on the floor for ten, we didn't fit but the worst thing was the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen. it was a before and an after. I was the freest person in the world, I had escaped from a gray prison in my house, and suddenly everything went wrong.
On the Yemeni island of Socotra he was happy. At what point in his travels would he like to return?
Undoubtedly to the white desert of Egypt. Those oases with an Egyptian friend who played the mizmar and where people went into a trance, to Siwa or the island of Socotra, with my friend Ahmed, living with some camel drivers in caves that used sticks to make fire. It was a magical moment, as if he had returned to the Neolithic. In Africa I was also happy, although it is a hard place, where sometimes you want to stay and other times you want to flee. Some trance ceremonies, at a frenetic pace, those moments are full of happiness.
Reject the word traveler.
I don't like that word for me. Traveler me? No! I am not a traveler, I like to go to the places that attract me and stay there for a long time to mix in other worlds. I like Egypt, animism, spirituality, but I'm not interested in having new countries stamped on my passport, being here today and there tomorrow. There are places that obsess me since I was little and I always want to return. I go to take photos, I come back to write and then to make films. Now I have to invent something to be able to return to those places.
Can't travel like before?
The trips from before were initiatory because they changed you profoundly. You were not the same as when you left home. Now that is more difficult. There was no television and the curiosity was reciprocal, of mutual discovery. At the beginning in Egypt, my Egyptian friends did not leave me alone for a minute. They took turns coming to see me at home so I wouldn't be alone. They invited me everywhere for lunch or dinner, they accompanied me. I have never felt alone traveling alone.
He has visited worlds that end. Is there something that makes us all equal here and there?
I have recognized myself in many things with people from those distant worlds. Perhaps what is common is friendship. In Socotra, such a seemingly different place, I felt like I was traveling within myself, in my culture. It was like being in the past. The shepherds were guided by the stars so I felt like I was traveling back in time, but I was not a stranger to that culture. Among animists in the Ivory Coast I felt something similar. Although at first glance it seemed exotic, it was not. The Greek and Roman sibyls who made prophecies, capable of knowing the future, the sacrifice of Abraham or the mass, where the body of Christ is offered, have similarities with those ceremonies. If you dig a little, we are the same. We have the same fears, the same illusions. In Europe perhaps we are more tanned, perhaps. You go to India or Africa and if there is someone bad there you see them from a league away, you see them coming. People are more transparent.
Have you known goodness?
They have helped me a lot. In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, I was very young and after a crazy night, smoking and drinking in some gardens, they stole absolutely everything, passport, money…. I lost consciousness and did not remember anything. Well, for a month I lived like a king. People I barely knew invited me to their homes to take care of me, fed me, offered me a place to sleep...
From whom have I learned the most?
I have learned a lot from the writer Mohamed Chukri. He had a very hard childhood and he was also a very hard man. He felt that he was in front of a different person, a lay saint. It has also happened to me with friends from Socotra or a poet from Lamu, in Kenya. Next to these people he felt that he was together with different people, almost mystical.
What place do you consider your home?
My home is my partner, Jordi, my four cats and my dog. Where they are is my home.
From the Egyptian oases does not become sane. In Barcelona or Foixà, where he lives, is it easier to keep your sanity?
I'm at a point where I'm nowhere. If I'm calm with my things, my photos... I can be fine with myself. I live in l'Empordà but it could be anywhere else.
What would you advise a young person who wants to discover the world today?
I would tell him to follow his heart. What do not do nonsense? No! Atrocities must be done to learn. I do think it is important to do something creative, write, take photos, draw... and try to have your own look. That interests me. That they look for a personal way to go around the world. That they read, listen to music and educate themselves to be able to have their own look. And look!
