Coolor '92

Two young people disappeared in the Valencian town of Alcàsser on November 13, 1992. The incident marked the beginning of one of the most infamous episodes ever to hit the police blotters of Spain, one amplified by media coverage that stooped to unheard of levels of sensationalism. Coolor '92 is meant to serve as a much-needed antidote by taking a distanced perspective and the rawness of VHS to trace the route from Alcàsser to Picassent, the location of the now defunct Coolor night club where the victims were headed. The strategy undertaken by Carlos Baixauli is reminiscent of what the great Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi did in his masterful A.K.A. Serial Killer (1975): to refute the methods of the mass media, past thinking from the spaces. A powerful, politically driven work that vindicates the need for liberating stigma from the places where trauma resides. (JHE)