This documentary was made in the same year as "En el corazón de la Atlántida" (1969), when I was just 10 years old and my father, Siro Manuel Lorenzo Salazar, was already a film director oriented to commercial filming and to documentary filming.
Siro Manuel Lorenzo Salazar was born in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands, in the 22th of November 1926, and he died the 2nd January 2003 in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). During his entire life he was in love with his islands, his lost childhood paradise. His creative power was always full of references, colours and traditions from the Canary Islands -his personal Atlantis-, where he returned at least once a year.
He started his career as a water colour painter trying to catch the light and colour of his loved islands, and he learned from painters such as Antonio González Suárez and Mario Baudet, with whom he was always a good friend. With Raúl Tabares, Pedro González and Víctor Núñez he created the Artistic group "El garaje", in Agere (Tenerife), showing early interest both for his country and for visual arts.
He moved later to Barcelona (Catalonia) following his heart to marry Isabel Gales, an exiled Catalan teacher who gave him eight children.
From painting and radio to TV and cinema, his artistic world always moved around discovering, studying and playing with light and colour. In this film, "Primavera en la Atlántida", he is playing with colours and light as if several water colour paintings passed by on screen.
His interest for customs, habits and traditions in the Canary Islands seems just an excuse for leading the audience to a trip to mountains, into valleys, onto shores and inside streets full of flowers. Handicraft and traditional objects are shown from angles and perpectives which are always beautiful and harmonious.
His film reproduces a bursting collection of colorful scenes: the red and black of the volcanic soil, the green and blue of the Atlantic ocean, and the rainbow of thosands of crasa flowers that can only be found in the Canary Islands.
This film shows many of the traditions he had known as a child, and that were already vanishing, pushed away by the boom of tourism and modernity: the "calabaceros" who passed gourds of water up the hill with their arms, women that collected petals for making flower carpets in Mazo village, the water-men who carried ice and water in jars form the tip of the mountains to the valley on mules...
Spring in Atlantis, the title of this film, evokes the Catalan poem "l'Atlàntida", by the poet Jacint Verdagué i Santaló, that he knew well enough. Joking both with his esoteric interests for hidden events and with the mystic Canary beauty, he recorded in the film several rural traditions, some secret valleys in the islands, and the strange flora and fauna from the volcanic ground and the highest peaks.
He always wanted to produce a TV series exclusively dedicated to explaining strange facts and events that happened in the Canary Islands, and he even wrote several episodes with the Canarian journalist Francisco Padrón Hernández when these events and mysteries were not as fashionable as they were later. (http://www.atravesdelcristal.com/Noticias.htm)
This film, toguether with the one "En el corazón de la Atlántida", are examples of his creative force, that brought him the First prize at the "XIII Festival del Film Publicitario de Venecia", and to renounce filming for painting again at the end of his life, dedicated to instilling his water colour pictures with the impression of a glimpse into his lost Atlantis.
Siro Manuel Lorenzo Salazar was born in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands, in the 22th of November 1926, and he died the 2nd January 2003 in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). During his entire life he was in love with his islands, his lost childhood paradise. His creative power was always full of references, colours and traditions from the Canary Islands -his personal Atlantis-, where he returned at least once a year.
He started his career as a water colour painter trying to catch the light and colour of his loved islands, and he learned from painters such as Antonio González Suárez and Mario Baudet, with whom he was always a good friend. With Raúl Tabares, Pedro González and Víctor Núñez he created the Artistic group "El garaje", in Agere (Tenerife), showing early interest both for his country and for visual arts.
He moved later to Barcelona (Catalonia) following his heart to marry Isabel Gales, an exiled Catalan teacher who gave him eight children.
From painting and radio to TV and cinema, his artistic world always moved around discovering, studying and playing with light and colour. In this film, "Primavera en la Atlántida", he is playing with colours and light as if several water colour paintings passed by on screen.
His interest for customs, habits and traditions in the Canary Islands seems just an excuse for leading the audience to a trip to mountains, into valleys, onto shores and inside streets full of flowers. Handicraft and traditional objects are shown from angles and perpectives which are always beautiful and harmonious.
His film reproduces a bursting collection of colorful scenes: the red and black of the volcanic soil, the green and blue of the Atlantic ocean, and the rainbow of thosands of crasa flowers that can only be found in the Canary Islands.
This film shows many of the traditions he had known as a child, and that were already vanishing, pushed away by the boom of tourism and modernity: the "calabaceros" who passed gourds of water up the hill with their arms, women that collected petals for making flower carpets in Mazo village, the water-men who carried ice and water in jars form the tip of the mountains to the valley on mules...
Spring in Atlantis, the title of this film, evokes the Catalan poem "l'Atlàntida", by the poet Jacint Verdagué i Santaló, that he knew well enough. Joking both with his esoteric interests for hidden events and with the mystic Canary beauty, he recorded in the film several rural traditions, some secret valleys in the islands, and the strange flora and fauna from the volcanic ground and the highest peaks.
He always wanted to produce a TV series exclusively dedicated to explaining strange facts and events that happened in the Canary Islands, and he even wrote several episodes with the Canarian journalist Francisco Padrón Hernández when these events and mysteries were not as fashionable as they were later. (http://www.atravesdelcristal.com/Noticias.htm)
This film, toguether with the one "En el corazón de la Atlántida", are examples of his creative force, that brought him the First prize at the "XIII Festival del Film Publicitario de Venecia", and to renounce filming for painting again at the end of his life, dedicated to instilling his water colour pictures with the impression of a glimpse into his lost Atlantis.