J DE LOS PLANETAS PRESENTA PLENA PAUSA

The screen lights up, and the faded, playful red strips of a Super-8 reel snake across it. Celluloid, you understand, shot in the last century by Iván Zulueta (San Sebastián, 1943-2009). The musicians appear and stand in front of the screen, with their backs to the audience. Frames that J has translated into the songs of Plena Pausa, his first album under his name. It has been a lengthy process, adapting unreleased films of our cursed artist from the seventies—queer, rock ‘n’ roll, junkie, highbrow bohemian—into song format, but the final result becomes hypnotic.

Plena Pausa combines that past of hedonism and creativity, of wasted youth and aborted rebellions, through the enchantment of a song. J in a heartfelt connection with Zulueta’s spirit trapped in his imperfect, scratched home movies. A past that doesn’t exist, sending signals to the fleeting present and sending emotion soaring through the decades. The moment is always “now.” Not before; not after. The end.

Plena Pausa is a project created in collaboration with Filmoteca Española based on the acquisition of the personal archive of the filmmaker and illustrator from San Sebastián.