La Mina is the result of a stay lasting one year with the Gypsies of La Mina, a ghetto on the outskirts of Barcelona. Together with Manuel Fernandez, one of their leaders, Hannah Collins wrote a stunning script based on the everyday lives of six people. They play their own roles and sometimes those of someone else, supported by professional actors who teach them to live with the camera while they relived events from their own lives. Patriarch Tio Emilio worked as spaghetti-western actor with stars including Sophia Loren and is now a judge in the open air Gypsy court. The young Manu dreams of being an actor, but in the meantime organises song contests for caged birds. Nenin, who still lives in a caravan, has not played his trumpet since the death of his father ten years earlier and is persuaded by his sister Nina to pick up his instrument again. Raphael sits in a wheelchair, sells lottery tickets and is studying to be a lawyer, but every night he softly sings the song Cante Hondo for his dead mother between the deserted tower blocks. This is the first time that Gypsies have allowed a camera into the ‘barrio’ since a disastrous crime film was shot there 20 years ago. La Mina was first made as a full-length feature and shot on 35mm stock, but was also edited for five screens, on which the different stories about three days and nights in the barrio can be seen simultaneously.
