Isaki Lacuesta (Girona, 1975) is a thirty three year old filmmaker obsessed with the language of cinema, in every film of his he explores one of its many elements. He worked on the script – central issue of classic cinema that he doesn’t underrate – on the film that made him well known, Cravan vs Cravan (2002). He was only 28 when he finished it. All those who read Maria Lluïsa Borràs’ Arthur Cravan were amazed by the mysterious aura that the poet-boxer exuded. Lacuesta was too and for this reason he wrote a screenplay interweaving Cravan admirers, such as the poet Enric Casasses, French art critics who give their opinion on the authenticity of the work of Oscar Wilde’s relative, and contemporaries similar to Cravan such as Frank Nicotra who, 80 years later, is also a boxer and artist. The script was a challenge, as it is not easy to make a documentary about someone when only a few seconds (or so) remain of him on film, and some, very few, photographs. However, Lacuesta pulls it off.

In La leyenda del tiempo (2007), Lacuesta transmits all the power that the shooting process can have on a film. He managed to record how the singing voice of one of the child protagonists changed and took it to the big screen. He discovered half way through filming that this gypsy child wouldn't sing because he respects the period of mourning for the death of his father, so Lacuesta rewrote the film's script in order to include this. Lacuesta arrived at Isla de San Fernando (Cádiz) in order to be there for more than three months. During this time, he lived with Israel, the young boy, and Makiko, one of the many Japanese fascinated by flamenco who travel to Andalusia. These characters never stop being human beings in the film thanks to the power of the way it was shot. Without a set screenplay, ‘most of the time, you feel like a tightrope walker on a slack rope, you don't know if you’ll get to the other side.’ Filming, pure filming. The actors were obviously not professionals. It is nothing like a Camarón de la Isla's biopic. It is much more than that, it explains and captures the presence of Camarón de la Isla, the famous flamenco singer, after his death.

‘Despite everything, filmmakers, who come from a tradition of camera filming, do not even need one to make films.’ In Las variaciones Marker (2007), Lacuesta made a 30 minute short without filming one shot. No filming at all! The whole thing is montage using other people's images. There was no way he was going to touch a film set. All concept, all montage, all homage to Chris Maker, a French director he adores. And that’s not all. Lacuesta has filmed using microscopes, to cite an example, and has shown films avoiding the one and only big screen that we are all so used to when talking about cinema. Lacuesta, like Marc Recha, opted for a multiscreen display for the shorts that he showed in the Frankfurt Book Fair 2007, where he presented works on artists such as Perejaume, Antoni Tàpies, Frederic Amat and Miquel Barceló.

Isaki Lacuesta, graduate in Audiovisual Communication from the Universitat Autònoma, Barcelona, and lecturer of the Masters Degree Course in Documentary at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, explores all corners of his art as if he were a cat on heat. Today he says that cinema ‘is not so much about telling a story as to find my own personal way of living, which allows me to travel and meet people.’ This is what he says today. Who knows what he will say later on, because at the moment he is only 33, and he is a filmmaker on the move.