In the aftermath of her grandmother’s death, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo decided to interview her mother, Gloria María Morillo. The three-channel video Retiro (2015-2019) began as a series of audio and video interviews, but transformed into a collaboration in which Gloria rewrites her own memories and directs her daughter, who re-enacts scenes of her mother’s youth. Through this shared process, Natalia confronts their relationship, digging into who Gloria was before becoming a mother, who she was at the moment of making the film, and who she will become as she ages.
Puerto Rico is a key character. Two contemporaneous events with important consequences function as the film’s psychic setting: the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), signed into law in 2016, which assigned broad economic powers over Puerto Rico to the US government; and Hurricane María, which caused widespread ecological and infrastructure damage in 2017.
The film is projected on vertical blinds – at once a reference to the window coverings of Natalia’s childhood home and a metaphor for the fragmentation of memory and time. This project originates in mourning but unfolds into something closer to pre-emptive grief, proposing a blueprint to address generational pain and create something so full of love and tenderness that it will be our inheritance instead.
—Marina Reyes Franco
