Words with Meaning: The Personal Panels of Luis Benz
Santiago Carrasquilla and Danaé Gosset share the work painted by Luis Benz while filming his biopic.
In my last Field Notes despatch I shared this short film about Luis Benz, a Uruguayan sign painter based in Argentina. It was filmed, directed, and produced by Santiago Carrasquilla and Danaé Gosset, and I first heard of it via their recent interview with Creative Boom.
The film was captured in and around the process of Luis Benz painting a series of identically sized panels with words that he’d chosen for their meaning and significance to him. This was a deliberate construct by Carrasquilla and Gosset as they spent five days filming with him. The final short biopic is visually centred on these panels and the process of Benz painting them.
Luis Benz: Happiness is Achieved with Very Simple Things on Vimeo.
In their interview, Carrasquilla talks about the words that Benz chose to paint:
“I was surprised by his choices. He pulled out an old dictionary and selected his favourite words, including some ancient Spanish words that are no longer in common use. On the back of each sign, he wrote the definitions.”
I was intrigued about the final set and contacted the filmmakers to ask about them. There were 58 words painted in total, plus one panel with just the Argentinian flag. Carrasquilla and Gosset have kindly allowed me to share them all here, with my best effort at translations given in the captions.
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