‘Stories to not sleep’, Lila Penagos’ family documentary premiering at the Quito International Film Festival

Born in Chile (coincidentally), Lila Penagos has always lived in Ecuador, with a Uruguayan mother and a Colombian father (and an Ecuadorian son). Now he presents his first film, The documentary Stories to stay awakein which she touches on an aspect of her relationship with her father, the stories he told her and her sister at night, stories that did not scare them, but rather made them think.

That intrigue to know what was out there continued throughout her life, and so Lila took her father and her sister (the film’s photographer, Amy Penagos) on a trip back to Colombia, to the places where he told his stories brought, to remember. the original versions, reality not fictionalized or edited for children. So They rediscovered the life and experiences of their father, from child to adult, his past in the guerrilla and his travels until he settled in Ecuador. and start a new family.

Lila’s original profession, although close to stage and screen, is not directing, but costume designer He has worked in theater, television, film, advertising and especially dance costumes., from 17 years. “It is the profession that I practice and from which I live, and halfway through I started manufacturing,” he says, recognizing that the latter is not a lucrative sector, and that it therefore maintains its main economic activity.

He started the project in 2015, after participating in the Andean Documentary Workshop Residency, held in Cahuasquí, Imbabura Province, through a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture of Ecuador and the Docmonde Project of the Lussas Documentary School. It is a genre he has always admired and consumed. “Over there “I started to materialize the idea of ​​my father’s stories, which always circulated between my sister and me.” They didn’t know whether to collect them to put them in writing, but they started the documentary, the writing process of which was long, with work and the search for financing. This is how the past eight years have passed.

“It grew, it became a need over time, financing was obtained for some phases and my interest in gaining production knowledge to carry out the project grew,” Lila recalls.

It was also a fragmented recording. In 2018, the filming moved to Colombia and in 2020 it was completed in Ibarra, the place where Lila’s father now lives, with his youngest daughters, the girls he now keeps awake with his stories, as shown in the film. There are also recordings in Quito.

“One hundred percent of the film is him, our relationship. It’s my view of him, but the one standing in front of the camera is my father.” It is the biographical exercise of Carlos Penagos, who has lived most of his 54 years in Ecuador. There are anecdotes, memories of the places where he lived, discoveries and the pain of people who are no longer there, but at the heart of the documentary is a story for children, The milk storywhich was originally about distributing food in an extremely poor neighborhood, with a happy ending.

“When I grew up and looked into it, I knew it was an experience he had gone through during his guerrilla militancy, a food recovery, as they call it in the movements. “They took over a milk truck, there was a confrontation with the police and almost ten of my father’s friends were killed.” That’s why, he thinks, it’s such a vivid memory for him that he makes the exercise of forgetting to remember in a certain way.

Lila has no plans to stop here. He is working on two other documentaries, called a 10-episode series The age of the gang, about the friendship between his son and other teenagers from the La Vicentina neighborhood, and Love and other tragedies, “about the love stories of my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother and mine, four generations and their idea of ​​love.” He chooses the familiar and homely, because it seems universal to him.

“I believe that honesty is the only requirement in this process, and it has helped me answer the question I have about my connection to the world, to society and, in this case, to my father. I doubt that cinema has a closed discourse, especially in documentaries – fiction is a different world –; “By asking yourself what you want from this, it becomes more honest.”

Stories to Sleep (80 minutes) premiered last Thursday at the Quito International Film Festival and will have a new screening today, Sunday the 22nd, at 6 p.m. at the Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco hall (Cinemateca Nacional, Avenida 6 of December and Thuisland , free entrance). In November, the producers offer a week of performances in Ochoymedio.