TENERIFE, ESPAÑA.-Benjamín Reyes Báez's gaze and silence first impact me. He has his vision trained as a cultural journalist, in fact, that is where his professional relationship with cinema began. One fears that quiet way of observing because biting words and sharp criteria emerge like from the mouth of Teide. When you barely know him, the approach of his questions takes you into areas of discomfort. After much conversation you feel that even from the beginning he has listened and respected everything you say. He is an exceptional canary. If he were ruthless he would not have invented a festival on his beloved island of Tenerife, where he weaves and expands networks between musicians and filmmakers, music lovers and film buffs, with an entire community of cultural enthusiasts.

 —To what do you attribute the emergence of DocuRock?

 —I am a journalist specialized in cinema. I have been going to the most important festivals in Spain for 20 years. With that background I wanted to create one in Tenerife. We started with six rock documentaries at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Santa Cruz in 2015. It lasted a weekend. The DocuRock International Film and Music Festival has evolved with screenings, debates and concerts. It reaches 16 municipalities and various spaces. We want to reach everyone.

 Before delving into the audiovisual part, we focus on that irreverent musical taste in the panorama of native folklore, the other root of a determination to offer cinema as the most spectacular of riffs.

DocuRock follows the heritage route. This image shows his stay in Tegueste.

 —Did you play in a band as a teenager?

 —No, but I have loved rock since I was little. When I was 13, Pedro, a schoolmate, gave me AC/DC's Highway to Hell album and told me: <<this is the Rock Bible>>. From that day on, my life changed. In the Canary Islands it has been an underground culture since the late '60s. In fact, the second band in Spain emerges in La Laguna, a municipality in Tenerife. It is called Urban Guerrilla, still active, led by Miguel Díaz <<Zurda>>. He was at the festival. For rock, we also organized the exhibition of images regarding the 60th anniversary of Club A-GoGo, the first rock concert venue in the Canary Islands and where women debuted miniskirts. Those yeyé girls were going to dance rock and roll. The famous duo of Juan Pardo and Junior was there. The Rolling Stones were going to come in the '70s but they asked for too much money and in the end their opening act, the Tomcats, played. The A-GoGo held 2,000 people. It was a small space of freedom, with a bowling alley. Now it's called Bar Rock.

—Your gaze is the filter. What do you take into account when selecting films?

 —For a film to be selected at the festival it has to tell a story, for example, we showed In the middle of Norway, the story of Jorge Martí, a rock star in Spain who lives with his wife where nobody knows him and he works there as a nurse. We aspire to the totemic event of film, concert and dialogue. We must share the movies we watch as an experience. I utopianly advocate creating small spaces of freedom. It is difficult to find them, but it is possible to get them. In this edition, the ninth, at the César Manrique Integrated Vocational Training Center (CIFP) we went with the Ríos brothers to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Mambí and to make a crossing between Spain and Cuba. It's about building bridges, while there are people dedicated to destroying them. Culture serves to build bridges, to listen to others and go against the current in a society that is increasingly individualized, more inward.

 —For our event you choose to talk about the DocuRock Educa section, why?

 —The Image Warehouse was a festival that I didn't know about. I was pleasantly surprised. The short films screened at the CIFP César Manrique are very good, they address risky themes. I have never been to Cuba, but I know many Cubans. Seen from Spain, the reality there is a harder life. Everything costs more for you and that is why I appreciate that you advocate for cinema as a mirror to improve society or create a refuge.

 “In that sense, the DocuRock Educa section is a kind of catch-all, where we project all types of films for inclusive culture, without cosmetic language. Cinema and music are an excuse to verbalize problems in society that are not talked about enough, such as being in prison, having autism, being deaf.”

 Presentation of Hair at Multicines Tenerife, La Laguna municipality.

Benjamín mentions the documentary La Singla, about a deaf gypsy dancer. That is why he involved the Romi Camela Nakerar association, which means << the gypsy woman wants to speak >>, and the Federation of Associations of Deaf People of the Canary Islands (Fasican): “In Spain there are a million deaf people. The film is an excuse to make these communities visible. Culture must be inclusive and reach all types of audiences.”

 —The length of the festival is striking, how do you manage that?

 —I don't know at the national level, but at the Canarian level, it is the longest festival. It lasts three months, when the normal time is one week. What's happening? As a spectator I have gone to a lot of festivals that last a week, screening 100 films. Nobody is going to see 100 movies. So, what you have to do is spread the activities. We do 50 activities in three months. It may seem like a long time, but there are 50 activities on eight islands, in 22 municipalities and everything is planned a year in advance and for the right places. In Lanzarote we will put Los Corujos because they are a family of fishermen from there, therefore, we stimulate an emotional bond with that island. Del Hierro is Aïda Ballmann, an actress who directed Camino de Tierra in Senegal, talks about the history of her family, cultural interaction. In the case of Frank Casanova from Tenerife, several horror shorts have been nominated for the Goya and we took the opportunity to connect him with kids and teenagers who like horror films.

DocuRock designs its programming in accordance with the audience it deems appropriate for each work. 

I still do not understand how to add institutions and sustain the DocuRock environment, with the collaboration of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Cabildo of Tenerife, the City Council of La Laguna and the City Council of Santa Cruz. Carrying out the four days of the Warehouse takes a lot of trouble every year. “No one gives me the money,” Benjamín clarifies: “I apply for public contests. I am not related to anyone powerful, because here everything works by last name. I come from the Reyes of Fuerteventura, from goatherds and farmers in the 19th century. I have had to do it alone, on my own merits; and then, thanks to people who help you, people I have met like the Ríos brothers and José Víctor Fuentes, from La Palma. In the end, with small help you achieve your goal.”

—What made you move from journalist to cultural manager?

 —I studied journalism and I thought I would be a journalist all my life, but society changes. Now it goes more to the show and I don't feel comfortable there. It has not been easy to assimilate this process, but I am adapting to the new times. I am dedicated to cultural management and historical research. I'm not interested in being famous, but I do want what I do to be valued. I need to feel the feedback. It will be my utopia, but I need to connect with other people and contribute a grain of sand for a less dehumanized society.

Concert by Kim Simmons at the Liceo Taoro, La Orotava municipality.

 —In this search for the public you surpass yourself personally, do you recognize it that way?

 —Film festivals are a parallel reality. In my daily and private life, I am introverted and I talk to few people; but at festivals it happens to me like a child at Disneyland. I look for the connections, the complement. I go out to meet the public with a little trial and error. I have gone places where a person goes. I'm not going back there. However, the morning with the Ríos brothers there were 150 students, a dialogue between generations of the 20th and 21st centuries and it worked, I also know from the prolonged applause.

Music and its audience in Tenerife, as the impetus of the festival.

 —You also practice hiking, does your island give you the best opportunity of your life?

—The question is not easy to answer. I was born in Tenerife, but I felt that I did not belong to this island, that I should have been born somewhere else, in Paris, in New York... I am from Santa Cruz. At 20 years old I was arrogant, I'm already 49. In 2011 I had a personal crisis: I lost my job, I lost my partner, the dog died. Then I started walking around the island, talking to the people in the towns, going to the archives. Tenerife seemed like a small place with little history to me until I discovered another island and a real connection emerged. Each one should feel proud of the place where they were born, without a superiority or inferiority complex; that's why now I write books of stories about Tenerife. We have the right to tell our own story and have it heard.

 Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez

The Camagüey's journalist Yanetsy León presented the exhibition of El Almacén de la Imagen, in a session shared with the directors Teodoro and Santiago Ríos, pioneers of the new Canarian cinema. 

The César Manrique center offers professional training in different areas, including cinema specialties.

The festival explores all possibilities with advertising. This year it highlights the figure of the Spanish musician Juan Perro, who will offer a concert at the Sala Aguere, in La Laguna.

Benjamín in front of the mural that commemorates the Spanish artist César Manrique (1919-1992) in the courtyard of the homonymous institute in the city of Santa Cruz, capital of Tenerife.