Sorolla: Following the Light

Joaquin Sorolla

I naturally come through more ideas that could potentially be made into documentary films than I could shoot in three lifetimes. Most flicker through like vignettes in super8 filmed from a moving train - intriguing, but gone before I can actually hold on to them. Then there are the ones that keep coming back.

I feel like I'm swimming in an ocean of endless ideas, mine and those of others, trying to make sense of time and the arts, not with tools or linear thinking, but through something closer to the experience of Freudian free association. If you think it's hard swimming in the high seas, imagine trying to catch a fish and eat it at the same time - that's what my experience as a documentary filmmaker has been so far. You're navigating, surviving, and feeding yourself and yours all at once, often not sure which direction will better provide.

Four years ago, while looking into the life of Peter Weinschenk for my film on Tabernero, I met Ricardo Aronovich. Aronovich had been a disciple of Weinschenk during the cinematographer's exile in Buenos Aires where he had become a master of Film Noir. I befriended Aronovich in Trouville-sur-Mer and from him I learned how Joaquín Sorolla had influenced cinema and the way in which cinematographers learned to appreciate light as an intrinsic part of the narrative.

Most recently, looking into Louis Comfort Tiffany's windows in churches and cemeteries, I surfaced (remember I was swimming, right?) with an unexpected catch: a portrait of Louis Comfort Tiffany, painted by Joaquín Sorolla. And there he was again.

Peter Weinschenk as a student in Berlin

Ricardo Aronovich, Trouville-Sur-Mer

This is how it works for me - often in unpredictable currents that circle back years later. We follow these currents and occasionally realize that what seemed random was actually a pattern by which certain ideas have been quietly moving beneath the surface.

So I've decided to dive deeper with absolutely complete disregard for the inevitable pain the atmospheric pressure would inflict on my eardrums.

In June 2026, I'll relocate to Madrid with my family for an immersive exploration of Sorolla, a daily practice of looking and learning. Each day spent in the Prado, experiencing the museum as a complete ecosystem where his luminous vision is in a permanent tertulia with Velázquez's shadows, Goya's darkness, and the countless other voices in that extraordinary chorus.

From this experience, I hope to trace the connections that led Sorolla to New York, where the murals he created for the Hispanic Society of America represent one of the best expressions of the complexity of independent factors that render Spain a true kaleidoscope of multiple cultures.

This won't be a traditional art documentary (should it ever make it that far). It will be about how certain influences reach across time and medium through something deeper than academic study.

Sorolla: Following the Light

Perhaps, we have to stop swimming and let the current take us to safe harbor, or to a sandy beach somewhere. Come to think of it, it was in fact Aronovich who explained to me once how Weinschenk himself used to talk of shades of gray in film as beaches. And here I go again! drifting in free association when I should be getting ready to pick my daughter from school and talk about what we're going to do once we move to Madrid.

Following the light - not in any religious sense, though there's irony there - but following the artistic principle that light is language, that illumination is understanding, that some truths emerge only through sustained, daily attention.

After years of unexpected encounters with Sorolla's influence, I'm ready to follow him home to where his most extraordinary work lives, surrounded by centuries of Spanish light. The question isn't whether this will make a film or not. The question is whether I can finally stop swimming long enough to see.