My Favourite Mug

My Favourite Mug

I don’t have a lot of favourite things. When somebody asks me about my favourite movie or my favourite musician, I tend to struggle to answer. There are so many of them, and I feel differently about them depending on my mood or what I’ve been thinking about as of late. I tend to give a generic answer or change the topic. It is simply too hard to pick. I should probably have a rehearsed answer where I just list ones I like, but I haven’t taken the time to do that. It seems limiting to me. Say I picked, for example, celebrated director X. I don’t want to be perceived as an X-liking kind of guy. I like to leave open the possibility of changing my mind, and expressing such a strong predilection for something means it is harder to take it back later, if that’s how one feels like. I just don’t have such clear cut preferences for most things. When it comes to mugs, however. I do have a preference.

Chronicle of a day without power in Madrid, Spain

Chronicle of a day without power in Madrid, Spain

On April 28th, 2025, there was a complete power cut across Spain and Portugal that lasted most of the day. There was no electricity, no phone service and no internet. Nobody knew what happened or how long it was going to last. This is how I experienced it.

I had a late one the night before, and I wasn’t working that day, so I woke up around midday. I made a coffee and looked at the news. The only headline that caught my attention was this one. Suddenly, the power went out. My building is an old one so the fuses blowing out isn’t a rare occurrence. Normally I open the fuse box, flip them down then back up and the power comes back on. Not so this time. I thought I might as well go ahead and do some chores that don’t need electricity. I dressed up and went down to get a particular type of nail that I need for a project at a hardware store around the block. That’s when I noticed it wasn’t just my building which had lost power, but the whole block/area. Every shop had some people standing outside, not knowing quite what to do. They were also surrounded by piles of trash bags, as garbage men have been on strike across the city for about a week. Quite a sight.

Mientras Haya Sombra

Mientras Haya Sombra

Mientras Haya Sombra (40′, 2023) is a freeform adaptation/edit of Mientras Haya Luz (Felipe Vega, 1987), with an extended soundtrack as well as footage from other movies, tv, youtube videos, and videos made by myself. It’s a Spanish neo-noir film, shot in black and white in the Madrid of the 80s, with remarkable style and poetic ambiguity. With this version I have attempted to intensify those elements, extending the ramifications of the core mystery and the density of the presentation. It’s my personal tribute to a quirky and unique film.

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