Jordi Esteva

Film inspired by the first chapters of my book "The Nomadic Impulse," published by Galaxia Gutenberg.This fifth film by Jordi Esteva, in careful black and white, like the previous ones, moves away from the ethnographic or documentary genre to delve into the autobiographical. It narrates the adventures of an eleven-year-old boy, Miquel, who during a summer in the dark 1950s, dreams of traveling to unusual places awaken in him a longing for freedom and...

Film inspired by the first chapters of my book "The Nomadic Impulse," published by Galaxia Gutenberg.

This fifth film by Jordi Esteva, in careful black and white, like the previous ones, moves away from the ethnographic or documentary genre to delve into the autobiographical. It narrates the adventures of an eleven-year-old boy, Miquel, who during a summer in the dark 1950s, dreams of traveling to unusual places awaken in him a longing for freedom and a nomadic impulse. A boy who traveled dreaming thanks to maps and geography books, adventure films, and his forays into the forest.

"Jordi Esteva's film is a marvel, and the poetry of its images has made possible the encounter between the old poet and the child who embarks on the initiatory path that will lead him to fulfill his desire for freedom, his dream of being a nomad, his stubborn will to be, without a doubt, an extraordinary artist".

Josep Massot, writer

The film is a masterpiece, with Jordi's attention to detail and his ability to imbue any image with beauty and mystery, elevating it to the status of a metaphor as if his gaze were Aladdin's lamp. There's a lot of disturbing material, symbolized by the omnipresence of insects from here and there: mantises, centipedes, even the marauding army (Esteva once wanted to be an entomologist), and even a mummification scene with the shadowy Imhotep and Anubis, a hallucination of the child, a “natural trip” when he falls ill with fever and readings, like a little Don Quixote. In this new genre Jordi immerses himself in, you can perceive the influence of Agustí Villaronga, his great friend who encouraged him to make films, and whom Jordi pays tribute to with references to the moral ambivalence of childhood, the Civil War, and even a shot from Pa negre.

A still from the movie El impulso nómada.

In the dark room, with Jordi Esteva’s camera moving through his memories, swayed by his voice and an extraordinary soundtrack (“50% of cinema is sound,” Villaronga used to tell him), we dive headfirst into Miquel's daydreams, in that summer of happiness, nostalgia, rite of passage, and disturbing encounters where reality and memory blend together: the child’s future and Jordi’s past, the village witch and the witchcraft of Ivory Coast, the snake crawling through the summer forests and the cobras of the Egyptian snake charmers, the water lilies and the sails of the Arab dhows of the sea. In a beautiful scene, the child looks up at the sky to see Sputnik 2 pass by with the dog Laika (a creative liberty, since it actually launched in November). And in another, defining everything that El impulso nómada is, he places his finger on an old globe and points to Socotra, the island that Jordi has put back on the map with his travels, books, and photos.

Some of us have managed to fulfill our wishes (or part of them) born from the days of that distant summer, whose end the film represents with the arrival of the rains and the return in the family Seat 1400. But Jordi Esteva has not only been able to fulfill his great desires, spreading them across the horizons of the world, but now he materializes the very root of his dreams. And thus, the golden remains.