6. Malvinas miscellanea: notes on a diary written while shooting a film in these remote islands
I was born in 1980 and I have no recollections of the Malvinas War in 1982 or the last Argentine dictatorship. I was never lured by the nationalistic discourses or by the sovereignty claims, though I understand their tactics. Maybe it has to do with my generation, born at the end of the dictatorship. Maybe it has to do with the fact that when I started to make a film on the Malvinas I was living in the United States during George W. Bush’s war on terror. My fascination with the Malvinas was a little simpler and perhaps childish: what are these islands like? Who lives in such an isolated place? I became aware of the origins of this fascination only later; once I had finished the documentary I shot there, in 2010. Even if the film is related to the war of 1982, I learned that what took me there was beyond these reasons.
As a child and teenager, I used to read stories of travellers and pirates in the ‘Robin Hood’ collection (a series of books by classic authors targeted at young readers and famous for their yellow covers). I used to read the books by Emilio Salgari, Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson: stories about treasure islands and buccaneers in the Caribbean. There were also books on battles and wars but they were distant and exotic to me. Perhaps I was actually longing for that when I became interested in the Malvinas; maybe I was just longing for a sort of return to the exotic stories of my childhood. Back then, as a child, I used to collect maps, postcards and stamps of places I had never visited. When I returned from the Malvinas these were the only tangible things I brought with me.
One of the main concerns in the film was how to capture the Islands outside of the war. In Argentina, the word Malvinas equals the war. I knew our film was going to address this but I wanted to be able to show the Islands as well, actually to know what the Islands and their people are like. When approaching how to do this I realised that the Argentines do not have an insular tradition. Even the sea is strange to us. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento wrote that the pampa (or the ‘desert’, as he called it) was in a way our ocean and our cities were the islands (or our oases). In fact, he wrote this without knowing the pampas all that much. He described and invented a tradition by reading accounts by French and English travellers. But I am neither a rural person nor a man from the 19th century.
Even though my gaze might be, like Sarmiento’s, corrupted by foreign books and films, islands remain something of an oddity, alien to ‘our’ tradition (I recently learned that in other latitudes there is a relatively new academic field: ‘Island Studies’). But like everything that is strange to us, I think that the Malvinas provoked me and stirred the possibilities of imagination. The Islands I knew might then carry an altered perception, a perception by which a barren landscape, the arrival of a new settler, or the visit of a ship might turn into an extraordinary event. A peasant from the Malvinas who might resemble Benny Hill for a British person of the metropolis could also be the son of a legendary runaway, a maroon or an outcast.
Let us now stick to the facts. It was a documentary that made me travel to the Islands in November 2010. I had started this project in 2007 with my close friends Julieta Vitullo (also a contributor to this volume) and Daniel Casabé (with whom I also directed another film). Initially, Julieta was going to be the main character in our documentary. It all started with her trip to the Malvinas in 2006, where she went to finish a dissertation and where she shot some amazing and very spontaneous material: her encounter with two Argentine ex-combatants. Many things happened between the project and the film, but we ended up shooting on the Islands three years after the beginning of the project. We were a crew formed of the producer Alejandro Israel, the cinematographer Leonardo Hermo and Lalo Guerra as the sound technician. After an almost impossible editing process and after a thousand films were set aside, we finished the film by the end of 2012. The way I see it now, our documentary is no longer just a film about the war or about Julieta’s experience, but instead a film about the Islands. I also think this was reflected in the very process of choosing a title: we finally settled for The Exact Shape of the Islands. It might be unnecessary to say this, but our Islands are far from being precise. I will leave it up to the film itself to explain what our intentions were or what is to be found behind the title. All that is true should hold a mystery or a secret, so let us stop right here. Let me explain, if you will allow me, what I intend to propose in these pages.
During the week I spent in the Malvinas, there were many things we shot that did not make it into the actual film, characters and stories that exceeded our focus but remained in my diary, in my notes or just in my memory. In addition, there were things and people we did include in the film that somehow, probably due to the very nature of the film-image, were reduced to only one or two features. Words sometimes allow for more nuances. Here, then, I will attempt the following exercise: to recover the spirit of that diary and to expand it. What you will read below is a partial recollection of my Islands. The Malvinas became for me the ideal source for infinite stories (and maybe this explains how difficult it was to finish the film). When making a documentary, one tries somehow to step outside oneself. In the process I learned that this is true for both fiction and documentary, even more so when the film is located on an island. The people and places you will get to know below are ‘people of this world’ but they are more isolated, they are set aside, they live in a more autonomous place, a more fictional one. When making a film you start slightly to ‘fictionalise’ in the moment you set aside and select certain features and attributes of your subjects. More to my point: remote islands could be places for new beginnings where many go in need of fashioning a new identity, to be somehow better. Moreover, do we not all want to think this is possible?
The Malvinas in colours
We already knew these islands in Argentina. The problem was that we had seen them too much, to the point that few people were interested in them (many people asked me why I had decided to spend so much time on a film on the Malvinas War). However, the Islands we have seen are made of a collage of TV footage from the war and magazine covers showing pictures of 18-year-old conscripted soldiers. The other images are those of films attempting to re-enact the war and its aftermath (there are very few things I hate more than fictional re-enactments: on this see the amazing documentary The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer). In all these visual memories, the Malvinas have a dark green tone or the black-and-white memory of newspapers. The word Malvinas also provokes in many a sort of automatic embarrassment and sad feeling. Others give no reaction at all: few things are less empathetic to the contemporary sensibility than the Malvinas anthem or the feelings it would seek to inspire. Everything changes once you see the Islands from the plane.
Before we travelled to the Malvinas, many Argentine friends would ask me the same questions. Were we authorised to go? How would we get there? Once I finished asserting that there were no obstacles, no one showed any real intention of visiting. It is possible to go there, but it is still more expensive than a plane ticket to Brazil or Peru. There are two ways to get there from Buenos Aires, but for our reduced budget, we had only one. Luckily, it was also the shortest one. Every week there is a flight by LAN Airlines that leaves from Punta Arenas to the Malvinas, but Punta Arenas is in the south of Chile (meaning travel to Santiago de Chile first and from there to Punta Arenas). Instead, our option, operated by LAN only once a month, was a flight from Rio Gallegos in Santa Cruz. Coming from Buenos Aires, we had our stop in Rio Gallegos, where we waited for several hours before boarding the plane. We spent some hours chatting in a café in the airport where we spotted a group of ex-combatants who were making their traditional pilgrimage to the battlefields. We shared some mates and exchanged our travel plans but we decided not to record them during our week on the Islands. Julieta had already done that on her previous trip and it formed the basis for our film. Hers was the most truthful account of ex-combatants that I have seen. In any case, this group of friends we met in the airport surprised us on board the plane.
They were sitting at the back of the aircraft and we would peek at them now and then. Suddenly, we saw them trying to speak English with a man in a military uniform. After we approached them with Leo (the cinematographer) and helped them with the translation, the Argentine ex-combatant became excited and started hugging his former enemy. The man had a friendly face and a chest filled with medals from Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Cyprus and the Malvinas. The scene had the clichés of many TV documentaries except in this case taken to excess. The Argentine ex-combatant kissed his brother-in-arms with exaggeration, even attempting a kiss on the mouth (in Argentina we say ‘piquito’, a small kiss on the mouth). Later in the week we found out that the ‘Argies’ offered the ‘Brits’ a lamb roasted on a cross, following the tradition of the gauchos. When we were finally returning to our seats, the captain made the announcement. We were beginning the descent into Mount Pleasant Airport. Oddly enough, the Chilean airline only mentioned the name of the airport, always avoiding all mention of the names Malvinas or Falkland.
Finally, we saw the Islands in colour. We saw light green hills and white sands; we saw a turquoise sea and a virgin landscape. I thought I could also be in the Caribbean or the Cyclades. Once in the capital town of Port Stanley, the island kept revealing its colours: vivid reds, bright yellows and navy blue roofs. I even saw red and orange flowers. The summer was approaching and the washed out greens and greys of April, May and June were somehow way behind, on TV and in old magazines. The military regime had had the idea of retaking the Islands just before the beginning of winter. I could not seem to find an argument to support such an idea.
Two very different towns
Mount Pleasant is an airport, but more than an airport, it is a military base. When you descend from the plane you can see the other kind of planes in the distance, jeeps, hangars and a group of not-so-welcoming blondish soldiers guarded by their German Shepherds (where were their terriers and bulldogs?). Mount Pleasant (oh, such a peaceful name!) is 50 kilometres away from the capital, Port Stanley. They both have around two thousand people but Mount Pleasant has a cinema and a cricket field and is populated only by military people. This large compound is a sort of void zone: why so many soldiers in such an isolated spot? What are they hiding?
On our last night we met three members of the British Special Forces (those in charge of counter-terrorism), right outside one of the pubs in Stanley. It was 11 p.m. and the pub had just closed. They were desperate: they wanted to get drunk and they could not. They had come from Afghanistan and when they realised we were ‘Argies’ they stressed that no one really cares about the Malvinas or Argentina for that matter. ‘You’re just pawns’, one of them told us. I did not say it, but I remember thinking that I did not mind keeping it that way. When I saw those men I could not help but imagine them screaming angrily at night, with their faces painted black, attacking the positions of 18-year-old conscripts. I think I started to grasp how difficult it actually is to understand the fear and the pain of others. Having been through a war, having witnessed the death of others, having survived that, I started to think, makes you an Island-type of person. You set aside a traumatic experience; you separate that fear from your continental part or you invent a new island. There is also the possibility of thinking that there is a community of people in pain who always return to their own metaphoric island. I believe that we all share a larger or smaller personal island. The thing is that the islands of the ex-combatants resemble the Malvinas: they are as remote and barren as it gets.
There is only one weekly flight to the Islands and so you are forced to stay an entire week. The visitors who make it here are divided into two large groups: war tourism and eco-tourism. That is to say, on one side the soldiers, their families and film-makers who travel here to visit the cemeteries and battlefields. On the other side, bird-watchers and penguin enthusiasts: the Malvinas have royal penguins, the Emperor type can be spotted on their beaches. Of course, we spent an entire afternoon with them (before reading Sandokan I used to collect a series of pictures of animals with scientific descriptions called ‘Safari Club’). The isolation that defines the Malvinas is not just geographical. It is intensified by politics. The Argentine government, with the support of its regional allies, maintains a blockade. Everything comes from Europe. In 2010, the price of two tomatoes was around seven dollars. In any case, the connections with the mainland persist (‘mainland’ is the word they use to refer to Argentina, the unnamable). Anyway, geographical proximity still beats any form of nationalism. The first islander with whom I spoke was in the airport, working on the luggage carousel. He was in his sixties, planning his retirement. His daughter was majoring in tourism in a private university in Córdoba. England was too far and too expensive for his salary.
After passing through customs, we board a sort of van and head for Stanley. The road consists of 50 kilometres of undulating hills with not even a bush. Once in the town we check in at Celia Stewart’s. She owns a small and beautiful house that she runs as a bed and breakfast: too many sausages, baked beans and eggs for our regular diet but perfect for an intense shooting week. Celia seemed very reserved, but Stanley is a very small town. As the days went on, Celia started to leave us messages that were passed onto her by different people who found out who we were. They wanted to be in the documentary. We started to meet some of them as long as our shooting plan allowed us.
There is a small, neat office located in Stanley that guides the possible investor on oil matters and the curious tourist. On the main street, right across from the post office and the red phone booth, you will find the Department of Mineral Resources. It seems that the bottom of the ocean around the Malvinas has oil. The problem, so far, is that it is very expensive to extract oil from such depths. However, according to this department that task is not impossible. We decided to find out about this and shot an interview with a person working there. A very agreeable blonde woman received us; she was in her fifties. Later we discovered she was a schoolteacher. A fellow teacher, I thought. Maybe that is why I liked her. Despite this, her information was suspicious. I know almost nothing about geology but at that office (as well as in the local museum) they presented a pretty absurd theory on the formation of the Islands. According to some researchers the Malvinas were part of Gondwana, thus linked to what today is South Africa. It is a convenient theory to avoid any Argentine claim to sovereignty. According to a different group of researchers, in the event of an oil spill Argentine shores would be safe. This is extremely difficult to believe, though in any case I liked the teacher. She was living in England when the war started and in that moment she decided to return home and work as a teacher. How many Argentine teachers are willing to fight Sarmiento’s battle in such an isolated town?
Brief notes on ‘war tourism’
We needed a proper vehicle to be able to visit the battleground and the positions where the main characters of our film had fought. We had hired a guide, Tony, who is a native of the Islands and who runs a small tourism company. We went with him and his friends on almost all the excursions: Mount Two Sisters, Goose Green, as well as the Argentine cemetery. I liked Tony: he was affable and he really knew his work. He had done a similar job with larger film and TV crews from all over the world. I could not find out much about his life other than the fact that he was married to a Brazilian woman and that they often travelled to Buenos Aires.
Our first important excursion with Tony was to Mount Two Sisters. Most of the material that Julieta had shot on her first trip had been recorded there. Our film combines what we shot on this return visit with the original material from Julieta’s recordings in 2006, made with a home-video camera. This Mount is an important space in both recordings and I had a sense of odd familiarity when I was there on Two Sisters. It felt like a return because we were literally following and returning over her footsteps. We somehow knew those steps because of the number of times we had seen Julieta’s footage. When we were editing her material, Daniel Casabé and I ended up repeating and becoming awkwardly familiar with all the possible tones in the voices of the subjects of the film. Finally being on the Mount was an exciting moment and at the same time felt like a repeated experience. Despite this sensation, right when I thought I was recognising my steps we got lost. Luckily, Tony was there with us.
After walking for many hours on Two Sisters, we could still see the effects of the war. We had seen several crosses honouring Argentine soldiers, pieces of a mortar and other weaponry. We also saw several holes in the ground caused by the bombings. In any case, I was expecting that and I have seen those images before. What caught my attention was the overwhelming presence of shoes and cheap boots. They were scattered around the Argentine trenches (actually known as fox’s lair). This footwear was relatively new; it was impossible that it had belonged to the soldiers. Later, I also saw that many remaining objects of the war kept appearing, something particularly odd on such a windy mount. I became suspicious and cynical. Was all that planted for visitors to be able to experience the war at least partially, even after so many years?
The ‘Flying Dutchman’
I remember the legend of the Flying Dutchman, the story of a ghost ship that has haunted sailors since the 17th century. It is a Dutch ship that can never make port and is condemned to sail the oceans forever. It announces tragedies to those who encounter it at sea. It was a popular legend but also an apt metaphor: that of a wanderer, the one who never finds rest. In Stanley we met an extraordinary man, a Dutchman, living far away from his native Utrecht. We interviewed Rob Yssel towards the end of the week. He was a fatalist. He understood fate almost like a character from a Borges short story. The day he set foot on the Malvinas was the day he encountered his destiny, the day he became who he was.
Rob had lived many lives. He had lived in cities like Amsterdam before coming to these shores. He had an indefinite age, a look that revealed the excesses of his youth combined with melancholy. He had lost Jane, his lifelong partner (his ‘other half ’ were his words), in a car accident in the Argentine Patagonia less than a year before. He had arrived on the Islands in 1984, when he was a cook working in a merchant ship. We may venture to suggest that he was tired of many noisy and crowded ports. The day he landed on the Malvinas he met Jane and he became a sort of stranded man, in his own words. When we met him he was in pain, anguished by his loss and surrounded by Jane’s possessions. She had been the archivist of the Falklands and her books were still open in the study, on the sofa, even in the kitchen. Her presence was almost asphyxiating; I could not imagine that constant mourning process, remembering every second his ‘other half ’. I peered into one of the rooms and I could see her tombstone lying on the floor. I think he was not ready to inscribe anything on it, as if that piece of stone would force him to stop mourning, would make him focus on the unloving task of forgetting her.
The Malvinas have many characters like Rob (maybe, again, this is just my projection). Many men and women living there had made difficult choices; they have learned the power of acceptance. Many have endured hostile winds and have chosen isolation. We recorded an interview that lasted almost two hours and then we continued talking in Stanley’s only restaurant, the Malvina House Hotel. That night all of us felt the need to drink a little more wine than we should have. It was getting too late for us but Rob prevented us from leaving: we were his new friends on an island with too many repeating faces. We had to say goodnight around 2 a.m., only three or four hours of sleep ahead of us. He said goodbye with a pessimistic prediction: ‘If they find oil in the islands, it is the end. But if not, it’s also the end’.
The children of the war
Today we shot different scenes in the town. We also did an interview not knowing if it was going to fit in the editing room (this particular interview we finally had to discard, unlike Rob’s, though it was also a powerful interview). The man in question in this case was John, who found out about our plans and left a message for our producer, Alejandro Israel. Before the interview, we knew that he had been ten years old and thus had a unique recollection of the war. We had also noticed in him a sort of distant and suspicious look. We finally set up a conversation between him and Julieta, first recording them walking in the streets of Stanley and then sitting on the bench in a square. The dialogue started with ordinary topics. He told us how life in the camp had been (camp is a word they use there to refer to the countryside, borrowed from the Spanish campo). From the beginning, he wanted the British history of the islands to go on record. As in the Argentine version, and as in many nationalist discourses, it has many cracks and holes, papered over with anachronistic emphases (small lives at the time become heroic ones, thanks to retrospective analysis). John defended the argument of ‘the one who saw them first’. According to the British, the first to set foot on the islands was Captain John Davis, who was stranded in the islands in 1592. However, and very politely, Julieta contrasted this with conflicting views. Thus, she mentioned that the first map in which the islands appear is from 1522, based on a Portuguese expedition; also, that there are claims that the Yaghan people – should we say nation? – had arrived before the Europeans.
In any case, the first settlement was actually French. John was not much concerned with historical (or geographical) accuracy. Nationalism is somehow a form of belief. John was at the time particularly angry at the Argentine government and its policy on the Falklands. At the beginning, we looked suspicious to him, just for being Argentines. He needed to say to us how badly the Argentine military had treated them, them being the islanders and the Argentine troops. We did not like his extreme nationalism, but soon enough we understood he was speaking from a distant place.
When the war began, when the Argentine troops were preparing their positions – according to John – a group of children and some women were locked in a big barn near the rural town of Darwin. This barn was his experience of the war. He spent almost two months locked in there. This barn, John continued, was close to Goose Green, the site of an important battle. He could hear the planes; he got used to the explosions. He insisted he was poorly fed and ill-treated. He also said that the young soldiers were hungry as well. There was something he had had to go through during those days which was still there, that he could not tell us. Though I could not know exactly what it was, I understood he would not be able to name it; most of him remained in the barn. As he spoke he started mumbling, getting more and more annoyed. He kept repeating, randomly that the Argentine government should stop ‘bullying’ the islanders. He took this personally: the exact phrase he would repeat was: ‘Don’t bully me. Don’t bully me’.
Then, after we thought the message was maybe too clear, he described the end of the war. Once the Argentine troops had lost the battle of Goose Green he could leave the barn. Once he was out, he had to see corpses on the ground, mutilated soldiers, young men screaming and crying. After that, there was a long silence and we continued to shoot only to ease the transition, but that was all he had to say. He added, though, that we should not change his testimony. He was tired of Argentine journalists changing their versions. We partially betrayed him, his scene did not fit into our film, but this is one of the reasons for this text.
New settlers
A half-hour pause in the shooting. We had finished some still shots of the town and in that break we went with Daniel to take a walk. Then we witnessed an ordinary sample of what this island is. We started to see some movement in the facilities of the fire fighters. It was like a performance. There were four of them. Two of them looked like astronauts; we had never seen a suit like that before. The costumes were extremely colourful: pink, violet, something like that. These two fire fighters walked like astronauts, practising, getting acquainted with the suit. Their colleagues were teasing them. We approached them and talked a little. One of them was from Chile and lived there permanently. He told us they even had a helicopter at their disposal.
Later that day we went to the supermarket. It was like any other chain supermarket. A sort of non-place but a more expensive one. It also had a coffee shop, one of the few in town, a sort of meeting place to chat and read the latest royal gossip. The hot topic was the wedding of Prince William. The fiction of the royal family seemed more powerful there. The supermarket also had a clothing shop. Most of the employees there were dark-skinned, and their ethnicity was not familiar to me, not from when I lived in New York or in my four months in London in 2000. They were from Saint Helena, another remote island in the South Atlantic, another absurd colony. These relocated islanders were the descendants of African and Indian slaves (who, in their turn, had also been relocated there). As in the Malvinas, Saint Helena had no native population. The difference was that at present the Malvinas offered better options for employment: Stanley has one of the highest GDP per person (and too many subsidies for very few people). Inside the supermarket, in the coffee store, we interviewed a young mother (she was in her twenties). She was blonde, with pinkish skin, a bit overweight. All her needs were met in Stanley, though she seemed bored. I could imagine her living a completely different life in a big city.
How to behave in cemeteries
Today we visited the Argentine cemetery in Darwin, a name that was given on account of the closest settlement (actually a group of houses only, several barns; John was probably held in one of these). The name was given after the visit of Charles Darwin in 1833, right after the British re-occupation (was science behind all this mess?). Brief digression: Darwin described during his visit a species called the ‘warrah’, a mixture of the fox and the wolf. The name was an English version of the Guarani word ‘aguará’, a wolf from the north-eastern region of Argentina. Darwin noticed that the warrah was too sociable, not afraid of men, and thus predicted with success its extinction. I like the warrah as a metaphor for the Islands’ status as well as a symbol of the rewriting of national traditions. Its name was perhaps given by the implanted gauchos (who in their turn were a prior iteration of the St. Helenans: gauchos and Charrua Indians were among the first forced settlers). On an infinite turn, these gauchos also ran ‘cuadreras’ (horse races from the pampas), still popular today in summer celebrations in the Malvinas. This was not a brief digression after all.
Let us return now to the deceased in the name of God and the Nation. The Argentine cemetery at Darwin was certainly one of the most important locations for our film. However, we ended up using very few images shot there. What I registered in my notes after this visit was something that the camera was not able to capture. Indeed, the cemetery in itself is overwhelming. On a deserted and barren hill you see 237 white crosses. We experienced there something difficult to convey.
We were there for more than two hours. We first took some wide-angle shots, then some close shots of the graves and the Virgin, then a sort of scene with Julieta that was a complete failure. This scene was a sort of conversation, Julieta speaking about the war and myself and Daniel doing a lousy job with our questions. We started to feel a sense of unease; Julieta started to answer in a bad tone and I became angry at her, somehow frustrated. We started blaming each other. The scene had no truth, no emotion, there was nothing going on. In the meantime, Leo, operating the camera, instinctively moved away from the dialogue; there was nothing to shoot there. It was a disaster. We were there in what was supposed to be one of the more significant places for our film and we blew it.
Then our producer called for a break. We resumed after a while but we were too tired, too frustrated. I remember that Tony, our guide, had told us that the constant wind made everything more difficult. Later that night we all talked about what had happened in the cemetery. We all were somehow angry, though we were supposed to be in control. We had been walking in circles over 237 dead men. Half of them were still unidentified. They only had a carving on the tombstone that said ‘Argentine soldier known only to God’. I have never seen ghosts or talked to the dead but I guess that being in such a barren and windy place is pretty close to that feeling. I understood later that this feeling has nothing to do with the fact of being in a cemetery but with the kind of cemetery it was.
On the other hand, Stanley has the most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen (I like Recoleta Cemetery at Buenos Aires as well). This is a simple cemetery, no luxury or excessive décor. What it does have in excess is the wind. We went there on a sunny day, on our very first day. It is slightly elevated and you access the place using a staircase that has a military monument to honour the 43 Islanders killed in the world wars. Once you enter the cemetery, you can see ten to 15 rows of graves and crosses with a view facing the bay. In the distance you can see the Mounts, even the Two Sisters. The graves reveal the origins and antiquity of the settlers: Butler 1885; Clarke 1851; Faulkner 1860; Lellman 1889; Pauloni, no date. While we were shooting there (we did include these images), we could see three kids shouting and jumping in the yard of a neighbouring house. They shared the same view of the bay.
Short scene: how to behave in a pub
The Globe is the name of one of the most popular pubs in Stanley. Then there are Deano’s, the Victory Bar and Rose Bar, run down by the wind and the sea. Many things may happen in a pub. Of these three pubs, the Globe, starting with its name, attempts to be a sort of imperial pub. It looks like a bar from the 19th century. It is filled with all the possible variations of the British colours. It also looks like a theme-bar, like a Hard Rock Café type of bar, though in this case the ‘theme’ is nationalism. There were very few customers, not more than five or six, and they clearly knew who we were. It was three or four o’clock in the afternoon and we were celebrating the end of our shooting. We had our beers and we made a toast. We had no idea what was going to happen in the editing room but we were happy. Right after that, the barman or someone in charge decided to play a video for us. We started to hear God Save the Queen followed by some images of the war. I need to say that overall everyone on the Islands was very kind to us, except for that little provocation. Oddly enough (or may be not), the man behind the bar was not English.
A friendly farewell with Kelper music
After the scene in the pub we shot some additional scenes, some still shots in town taking advantage of the good light. We had few hours left on the Islands. I remember during all that week my friend Daniel insisting on visiting the lighthouse at Cape Pembroke, near Stanley. Finally, the opportunity presented itself in a very friendly manner.
Rod is Celia Stewart’s neighbour; he lives right across from her bed and breakfast and takes care of her wonderful winter garden. We hardly got to know him until this last day. He offered us a ride to the lighthouse in his Land Rover. Daniel, Alejandro (the producer), Leo and I were fortunate that the rest of the crew were too tired to go (or was it like this after some negotiation?). Rod gave us the most amazing farewell possible. The sunset was beginning when we arrived and we shot some beautiful takes of the shores and the Mounts in the distance. Unfortunately, Rod did not fit into our film and we did not know how to thank him for all his generosity.
On the half-hour ride to the lighthouse, we learned that Rob had come to the Islands two years after the war. He was working for the government and made a life here. He and his late wife would teach dance lessons and were happy with the simple life of Stanley. I admired this possibility of living in such a place. I did live for some years in a small town but ended up moving. Not only had Rod encountered a happy life here but he had also decided to stay. He had relatives in England (I think a daughter and a son) but he could not imagine himself living anywhere else, even after many years as a widower. After talking for a time and telling us a bit about his life, he decided to play a cassette. He did not say what it was. We could not believe our ears.
At first, we heard the sound of a guitar in the style of country music. The singer had a British accent though it sounded Irish or even like American country music. It was joyful music though the lyrics had some of the rural anguish you find in many folk genres. When I started to understand some of the places mentioned I was amazed. It was Kelper music. The singer was referring to Mount Two Sisters or even his life in the camp as well as his difficulties with a beloved woman. We were seeing an amazing sunset accompanied by Kelper music. All of us immediately wanted to use that music in our film. We could not think of a better way to start capturing the Islands in a different manner than using this strange music.
The first thing we did once we were back in town was to record this Kelper album by Rock Berntsen called White Grass Memories. The week in the Malvinas could not have had a better ending. Before returning to the bed and breakfast, Rod bought us some beers in a pub. It was a warm night and there was a full moon. I think we were all very happy that night. After many attempts, I finally managed to get in touch with Rock Berntsen, the Kelper musician. This was several months after we had been to the Islands. I told him that we desperately wanted to include some of his songs in the film. I explained to him that our film was also about the possibility of a dialogue and the idea that there is more to show about these islands than their sovereignty. However, he decided not to play along, to keep the music only for the locals. This made me sad. However, I am glad I heard the songs and that now, some years later, they remain part of a diffuse memory of that trip.