The Year of the Discovery

Luis López Carrasco

IndieLisboa 2020 •

Spain, Switzerland, Documentary, 2020, 200′

1992 was an important year for Spain: Barcelona’s Olympic Games and the Universal Exposition of Seville. But the narrative of a prosperous and modern country had his reverse. Like in a great illuminist encyclopaedia, the director will listen to the conversations in a typical bar in Cartagena, giving voice to people – workers, unemployed, demonstrators – that lived the arrival of the economic crisis, the close of factories and several incendiary revolts.

Through a meticulous selection of testimonies, El Año del Descobrimento focuses on 1992, when the Seville Expo and the Barcelona Olympic Games took place as well as the work­ing class revolt that burned the Parliament of Murcia. In Luis López Carrasco’s second feature film, the director works again on a documentary discourse, this time through the historical and social revival of a forgotten theme in a bar in Cartagena, Spain. The film is composed by the contribution of 45 citizens from peripheral neighborhoods of Cartagena and La Unión, and their memories from that period. An almost forgotten historical moment, it brings to light the importance of dialogue on class consciousness, the economic crisis and the role of unions. Above all, El Año del Descubrimiento sheds light on the importance of rescuing memory from oblivion covered by the past and the consequent vital power of cinema in its recov­ery. (Inês Lima Torres)