The Spanish National Library organised an exhibition about Concepción Arenal, a woman philosopher and the first penalist in Spain in the XIXth Century. My mother wrote her biography and was awarded the National History Award for it. She became one of the comissioners of the exhibition, and proposed me to do the videos for it. We worked alongside with one idea in mind: to re-read Arenal in the modern world, to update her philosophy and apply it in our actual society. She lived in the XIXth Century, but her thought sounds as it came from today's world. She talked about human kind, about dignity and pain, she put forward ethical questions about the way we treat others and the world around us, and above all, brought back the focus on the self.
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"Humanities" is a video shot in the prison "La Model" in Barcelona, which was closed 7 years ago. This location was chosen because of its historical memory and its direct relation with Arenal's major concern: to protect the life and dignity of the people that have to live in it. The video exposes a text from Arenal in where she questions "What is the human being?", and where she talks about our consciousness in good or bad actions. Different people, from many different backgrounds and with different attitudes, goals and behaviours, say the text in which they become the same and one whole thing: humans.
My other proposal was to create interactive videos about some short stories that Arenal wrote in order to put forward a moral problem. Because of time and resources, we couldn't make it completely interactive, so I adapted them in animation videos as it completed a few goals: modernise the language, simplify the story and create engagement from another point of view. Telling the story only by images, I wanted the audience to feel the story rather than analysing it, so that the message turn into the deepest human emotion that creates knowledge: empathy.
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"The Diligence" talks about precisely that, about compassion and kindness. I adapted the story from the text, directed it and edited it. Nevertheless, the beautiful drawings and animation come from Irene Corral de Gaspar, and the original music from Pierre Haessler.
"The king and the prisoners" is the second story I adapted for the exhibition. I chose from several texts from Arenal, and although there were many very interesting, I liked this one specially because it could reflect perfectly our goal of modernising Arenal's philosophy. The story has an inevitable relation with the lockdown we've lived in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and I believe it's a thought we had to put forward. The difference between using time and taking advantage of the time.
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