Hamalau gau

“Night will fall fourteen times in this film. We will count them.” So begins this nocturnal, musical journey—a voyage that drifts through the artistic vision of the Basque artist Jorge Oteiza, and which is dominated, above all, by an “Interior, Night” setting: the Basilica of Arantzazu. It is there that the longest night unfolds, beside the sanctuary’s organ, where filmmaker Oskar Alegria shuts himself away to recount these fourteen nights to pianist Iñar Sastre—summoning him to conjure, through the keys, images he wont see. From this challenge emerges a collection of fourteen moons, fourteen darknesses, and fourteen mysteries that form a single frieze. Fourteen, like the number of apostles Oteiza managed to place on the façade of that temple in an artistic challenge that broke all the rules; and fourteen because, as he himself put it, “there was no room for any more.”