Don Javier
Javier Lives his daily routine. We see him on a terracewith a lot of plants on peculiar containers, and other particular decorative objects. In this terrace, Javier takes care of his plants and toasts a bread. At dawn, we go into the house: A careless place, filled with memories.Javier looks a portrait of a woman. At night we see him paint on a canvas and we walk the space, joining melancholy, beauty and art.
Like that, we leave Javier in his intimacy and we go out to the streets glimpsing some distant characters.
Birth of the project
The project begins while walking on the streets. Three men were grilling on the sidewalk of a small street, sitting around a long table under the playful shadow of some trees.
A man walking in front of me asked these three men what they were grilling. The man with the long beard, cowboy boots and the appearance of an arab pirate lost in the city answered him in a surprisingly friendly way:
-Sweet potatoes my friend, please, take a seat and join us.
-No thanks, but it smells delicious.
-Thank you, have a good day.
- Thank you, you too.
I walked by as if my life kept the same, but in the inside I was telling myself over and over again to go back and ask them if I could join.
I got to my house and told my sister. She told me to go back and tell them that it smelled delicious. So I did.
That day I got to meet Juan, the doppelganger of José José and highway ingeneer; Memo, the man with the crazy eyes, who worked with some of the best mexican rockbands; and Javier de la Mora.
Javier caught my attention from the beginning; he had a straight and sensitive demeanor. He looked tough, yet friendly.
Next to the sidewalk was his house, so he took some of his paintings out and we spent some time finding landscapes, faces and hidden bodies in the abstract paintings. Most of them hidden to him too.
I needed to develop a thesis shortfilm and I knew I wanted to make something based on the empathy and the daily life. So I asked Javier if I could make a moving portrait of him.
Making of
I wanted for the process to be as organic as possible, so I used as less photos as I could and I drew and talked as much as I could. The drawings helped me get closer to Javier, because I had to observe him a lot to captivate his gestures his character and his movement.
Character Design
The chore of the project is the observation of a real person, so I trid to make a realistic synthesis of the character. The process to reduce lines, and curves without losing the esence of Javier was interesting and challenging
Art
The endresult is the reflection of the process. My intention was to make the project alive. I wanted to apply analog techniques, but time was on my shoulders. The line and texture conserved the accidents of the analog materials.
The Kitchen
The Terrace
