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
With the additional support of Jorge García Alberto; Ignacio Cortés; José Castrodad; Mellon Foundation; Salomé Galib
