To Books and Women I Sing

Virgil started the Aeneid declaring he was going to sing "of arms and the man". The intentios of this documentary are almost the opposite, but it also proposes to dialogue with past tradition.

Four portraits of women and their libraries. Anonymous women who take care of books, in an intimate resistance, with no revolution, no weapons. A search for the characters that are often in the margins of cinema and literature; and homage to those who fight against fire, water, dust and ignorance. Images of bookshelves, objects next to books, prints on the walls, illustrations between pages.

One woman was almost named Avioneta. Another created a library in the back seat of her car. Another broke her finger in an accident with her library. The cigar women listen to readings while they work. The ironers talk about poems.

The question is how can literature, cinema or pictures help us live, how can they make us more free; and this is an homage to the women who are in charge of preserving the letters in an act of resistance. Maria Elorza (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1988) directs and writes this documentary which, in her own words, is like a garden: because it grows on its own, time passes in its own way, there's always a bit of breeze, we take a walk through it, it's full of legends and mysterious names. Produced by Koldo Almandoz and Marian Fernández Pascla, with photography by Maria Elorza.

• Documentary