OUR PERPETUAL NOW
DIRECTED BY JORGE AGUILAR ROJO
UNITED KINGDOM // 2020
8 MINS
A man editing one last conversation out of his memories in order to say goodbye to the woman he loved and is now gone.
Reflective Encounters
“In my memories, my grandparents’ house always basks in the sunlight of a hot early afternoon of mid-June. The apricot tree I can see from the kitchen window is ripe – the fruits’ sweet taste and the bright orange of their skin are exceptionally vivid in my mind. In my head, I can go back there whenever I want while random snippets of conversations with my grandma get stuck in between ephemeral images of the time we spent together. A hug, a question – when will you be back? – a whirlwind of warmth and pain. It’s all that there is now.
Jorge Aguilar Rojo’s Our Perpetual Now explores similar territories, plunging into a memoryscape ravished by grief and solitude. After losing his partner Elise way too soon, Tom receives a call from a colleague who needs him to go through Elise’s hard drive. Sudden and perhaps unwelcome, this is a chance for Tom to piece together fragments of the moments he shared with the woman he loved. Shards of past conversations echo through this colourful dreamspace where what is now lost seems to be, forever again, within reach.”
— Ren Scateni
Filmmaker Q&A
A Q&A with filmmakers from The Past Within programme at Encounters Film Festival 2021.
Filmmakers - Ewa Smyk (Homebird), Wu-Ching Chang (My Grandmother is an Egg), Jorge Aguilar Rojo (Our Perpetual Now) and Christine Saab (In the Space You Left).
Hosted by Iris Dosen, Encounters programmer.
Director’s Statement
I wanted to create a very intimate story but with a universal emotion. If we're old enough we somehow have felt sorrow for our past and the loss of a beloved one, but this story is for us to understand that we can always give a different meaning from the past in order to learn, enjoy those moments and let go.
Filmmaker Bio
Award winner filmmaker and animator based in London/Mexico. Born in Mexico City in 1984. Has worked as a scriptwriter, director and animator for projects including short films, music videos and experimental. In 2007 won the "Transparencia en Corto" National Award in Mexico with his first animated short film.
In 2012 directed the animation/roto short film Invisible. Selected in several festivals around the globe like Cut Out Fest (México), Baixada Animada Fest (Brasil), Short Shorts Film Festival (Asia), Guanajuato Film Festival (GIFF). Winner of the FONCA National Scholarship (National Fund for Culture and the Arts) to study an MA in Character Animation at Central Saint Martins, London in 2017.