Session sixty-two, Illegal_Cinema

Screening proposed by Maia Villot de Diego, followed by discussion.

This Illegal_Cinema session was proposed by me, but is based on something my dad used to do.

My dad is Galician, a Celt and a stonemason. He’s been travelling since he was very young and has lived in several different countries, speaks a number of languages, and reads everything he can get his hands on. For around the last thirty years he’s been living in Navarra, where my mum is from. They met in Menorca and I was born in Seville, but we lived in a village in Huelva. Maybe this has had something to do with his eclectic tastes.

Some years ago, my dad started watching pelota, a Basque ball game, on TV (I don’t think he’s ever seen a single game live).

He also loves music – rock & roll, country, classical, flamenco, English folk, narcocorridos, rancheras, Zydeco or Cajun, Bluegrass, California Sound, tangos, milongas, bagpipes, jazz, foxtrot, hip hop, bolero, copla…, and when he’s not watching TV or reading, he listens to music all the time.

Sometimes he listens to records, but most of all he listens to the radio, Radio 3 in particular. He listens to music while he’s working, cooking, even while he’s sleeping.

He hardly ever misses Radio 3’s country music or flamenco programmes. There was a time when his pelota games and the flamenco programme happened at the same time, so he’d watch the game with the volume turned off and listen to the flamenco programme. That’s what we’re going to do.

Maia Villot de Diego, daughter of Yolanda and Xan, is an artist, bookseller and weaver, among other things.