WAITING FOR SANCHO

At the end of 2007, Albert Serra calls on the Canadian film critic and programmer Mark Peranson: he is to play Joseph in “Birdsong”, Serra’s free adaptation of the journey of the Three Wise Men. Peranson agrees – and brings a camera along. For five days, on Fuerteventura and Tenerife, he films what happens around him, with the sole condition that he must not disturb Serra’s shot. He sees a crew trudging through scorching desert, climbing the highest mountain in Spain and walking across wind-swept stone fields; non-professional actors improvising from a thirty-page treatment; and a director for whom exhaustion is not just a physical state but an artistic principle. “Waiting for Sancho” (Canada 2008) is the chronicle of this shoot, from the inside and without any distance.

It is not a conventional making-of: Peranson is interested in the interplay between actors, crew and Serra, and in the exhaustion and humour that arise from it. The film screened at, among others, Rotterdam, the Viennale and the Harvard Film Archive, mostly in double bills with “Birdsong”. “Waiting for Sancho” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2009, in the Spezial Making of Birdsong section.

Shown at the 2009 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2009 · Film Archive