Membrana
2015 · 15m · España
Directed by Marco Huertas
Genres: documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative
Conversations with several generations of Spanish indie musicians: Arizona Baby, La Habitación Roja, Polock, Sidonie, Soledad Vélez, Tórtel, Tuya and We Used To Pray.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straight-faced music doc about Spanish indie bands sounds like exactly the kind of reverent, consensus-safe pick that makes me want to scream—except Huertas treats these musicians' philosophies with enough formal rigor and philosophical weight that it stops being hagiography and starts being something weirder, more honestly confrontational about what it means to create outside the machine.
Membrana situates itself squarely in the essay-documentary tradition, where the filmmaking voice emerges through careful juxtaposition of image, sound, and interview rather than narration—Huertas's editing choices and his refusal to sensationalize these artists' work demonstrates the kind of restraint and formal awareness that separates a monument from a film.
The decision to let these musicians speak about creative philosophy rather than perform is the hinge the whole thing turns on—it's a formally small choice that reframes what a music documentary can do, and on a 15-minute runtime with what had to be minimal resources, that restraint becomes the film's signature.