2023-09-26 00:25:18
San Sebastian
Updated Tuesday, September 26, 2023 – 00:25
He is the most loquacious of the survivors of the tragedy of the Andes and the staunchest defender of Juan Antonio Bayona’s film
Gustavo Zerbino with Juan Antonio Bayona in San Sebastin.WORLD
That’s it Gustavo Zerbino He approached each of those most reluctant to eat and explained to them, sitting next to them, with infinite patience, what it meant to live or die, to each one with different words. This is how The Snow Society, Pablo Virci’s book on which Juan Antonio Bayona’s film is based, refers to one of the 16 survivors of the tragedy in the Andes of 1972. In another fragment of that same text that navigates in the same way For memory, forgiveness, confession and adventure, a classmate describes him as a joker of the soul. He is happy. He is now 70 years old in the heat of a festival that has surrendered at his feet (the production leads the audience’s score by far) and he has been, one might say, always. Even in impossible moments. Assertive talker, resourceful lecturer and even a gal from another time, he does not hesitate for a second to provide a personal testimony that, in truth, concerns us all. To each one with his own words.
Does our insistence, from the media, on the episode of anthropophagy bother you? I have done thousands and thousands of interviews and I think you are the first to ask me this. Be fast. If I fell on a plane tomorrow, I would start eating human flesh the next day so that more people would be saved. I never had a nightmare, nor do I regret anything at all. We decided to feed ourselves with the only proteins that existed where there was absolutely nothing. Where we fell, I had never stepped on a living being. There was only death around us. And to live we had to move and to move we needed energy. I will tell you what my son said when he was six years old to some friends. They were watching TV and a friend asked him what his father was eating. And my son answered that to climb the mountain they borrowed the muscles of his dead friends. Six years old does he say he was? Yes and it is a wonderful metaphor. If you look closely, millions of transfusions are being done right now all over the world. And blood is a tissue just like muscle. That’s not counting all the lung, heart, kidney, retina transplants… In Uruguay, unless you explicitly refuse, all Uruguayans are organ donors. In any case, what we made was a pact of love, we authorized others to eat us if we died. I remember that when we arrived they told us not to buy anything because they wanted to protect us. And we refuse. We had nothing to hide. We had to break cultural, religious and biological taboos, and we did it because in the Andes mountain range we built a new society. Since you returned from The Valley of Tears you became a survivor, does that label bother you? I consider that before we were rebels To endure what we endure required, above all, rebellion. I was in the mountains for three months and now I am 70 years old. I have been in my life doing many more things than just surviving. I returned from the mountain, but those who stayed there also, somehow, survived. And even more so after this film that is the voice of those who have no voice, of those who died, but live. He spoke of rebellion. I understand then that it was their character, not simple desperation, that made them succeed…For me, being anti-authoritarian is automatic. I am irreverent by birth. I do not accept limits or rules by imposition. Nor am I afraid of punishment. The most creative are usually the worst in the class. Those who conform become paralyzed. Creativity develops with adversity and limits are meant to be broken. If you are here it is because you support and believe in Bayonne’s film. What do you think of the other versions? The first film, Mexican, is a very respectful version, but very bad. At night they went out to pray the rosary around the plane at 40 degrees below zero… The second is fine, but the British reality has nothing to do with us. The most famous, Viven!, by Frank Marshall, is made with great respect, has very spectacular images, recreates the fall and the avalanche very well… but they never consulted us. At first we were against it because the tragedy was too close, but in the end you realize that it is just an entertainment film. If I’m here it’s because The Snow Society literally puts you in the mountains. It makes you live and feel what we live and feel. How do you think that what happened to you in an analog world now concerns us in the digital age? The globalized world we live in today is a constant chaos. We want it all now. We are addicted to instant gratification. Today digital information makes you believe that you know everything, but we know nothing. I believe that our story can serve to connect with the unlimited potential of man when he lives in the present. If instead of this anxiety to experience everything at all times we concentrate on what we do now at this moment, the human being has no limits. And besides, everything is a group effort. Ask for help if you need it. Alone you get there faster, but together you get there for longer.#Gustavo #Zerbino #survivor #tragedy #Andes #fell #plane #tomorrow #start #eating #human #flesh #day