Every so often it happens: a new generation starts knocking at the door claiming its right of entry, tired of waiting out the present in the corridor. In the meantime, the dominant generations hold on to what they have, they hunker down, convinced that the present is theirs and theirs alone, that they came to stay, and stay they will. That is how it goes and how it always will, to a greater or lesser extent. For several decades now we have heard them say it: “the best prepared generation in history” in reference to the ones trying to make
their way through the tightest of bottlenecks. In the case of the Z generation, there is something that makes them stand out, a circumstance of our times that endows them with a supreme power, although the resistance of the X and Y generations is stronger than ever. They were born, not during the transition from one epoch to another, from the Gutenberg Galaxy to the digital era. Rather they have grown up in an environment already digitalised, with mobile devices in their hands (uniting information, music, cinema, photography…), with the devices that came before all but
extinct.
As if by second nature, they can shoot short films, scenes, pieces sometimes without meaning, beyond just recording the present, an instant of any kind. And they are able to shoot, edit, share and forget it, all in a few short minutes. The change has turned the generation gap into something of cosmic dimensions. Cutting Close to the Bone, the session that looks the present straight in the eyes, without flinching, has got us used to compiling short films on serious international conflicts, on lost causes, on topics with a profound socio-political resonance. This year however, our aim is to
go one step further and enter the borderlands separating the digital generations from the generations still controlling the present, albeit for a short time. An open outlook on various young people from various locations, who coexist naturally with the technology, with its emotional, ethical and communicative contradictions, recorded in many cases by themselves, the intention being more to capture the rawness of the present rather than a paternalistic, patronising or prudish view of their peers.
Some of these short films contain more truth and information than certain opinion articles or sociology studies. Also on view, beyond the digital environment, are the conflicts, doubts, problems and obstacles arising at the juncture between infancy and adolescence, and adolescence and maturity; universal themes that, despite the support media involved, are not that different from one generation to the next. Cinema once again demonstrates its capacity to observe the present… and to cut close to the bone.
