Between Sky and Sea

Home movie images are full of life and abundance. Uncles, aunts, cousins, euphorbia and dragon trees, the sea and the sky, celebrations, food, dancing, colors and, as the central figure: the father. In contrast, the filmmaker’s memory space appears sparse and fragmented. This place is often lonely, and the vibrant present captured in the Super 8 and video recordings is noticeably absent.

Sarmiento spent the first four years of her life in Gran Canaria, a time that she can only partially recall through mental images. Over the years, the rugged island in the Atlantic has become a place of longing, and “Papi” a figure of longing. Yet the man who appears so life-embracing and affectionate amidst his many siblings in the moving images is now a different person.

Between Sky and Sea is Sarmiento’s attempt to come to terms with the losses caused by her separation from her father and her move to Germany, and to reconnect the severed ties. In his house on the island, she carefully sifts through her family’s extensive archive. For generations, they lived off agricultural labor and at times were forced to earn their living as migrant workers on Cuba’s sugar plantations. As the scattered fragments gradually come together piece by piece, the past – now transformed into images – often drifts apart from idealized visions and reality. Sarmiento encounters a man who, during the years of the Franco dictatorship, sought refuge in distant travels and spiritualism, and who also responded to the separation from his children with inner withdrawal. Today, the father feels most at home in the virtual world and in the reality of “alternative facts” – a challenge for Sarmiento in both of her roles as daughter and filmmaker. She seeks and finds other ways of connecting and comes to realize that rapprochement and mutual understanding mean, above all else, seeing and accepting the person as they are in their present existence. (Esther Buss)

Translation: John Wojtowicz