Cecilia and ‘Ecce Homo’, on their way to becoming a movie ten years later

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The painting, surrounded by a forest fire on August 14, still attracts an average of 11,000 people a year to the Santuario de Misericordia de Borja

Since Cecilia Giménez repainted it in the summer of 2012, Borja’s ‘Ecce Homo’ has starred in memes, theses and even an opera. Now, ten years after the world learned of the old and new face of the painting in the Shrine of Mercy, this story has gone around the world on its way to becoming a feature film.

It is a “national film project” that tries to collect “Cecilia’s life and her experience with ‘Ecce Homo'”, said Eduardo Arilla, Mayor of Borja. After the talks that have taken place in recent weeks, the Consistory has sent the image rights contract of the production company in question, about which the mayor is not giving more details at the moment. The signature is missing. “Whether they come here or not remains to be seen. It hasn’t even been talked about, but it would be very good for the people,” he says. He appreciates that “with the whole team the hotels can be filled”.

The first press release of Cecilia’s repainting, an article in ‘Heraldo de Aragón’ published ten years ago this Sunday, put Borja and the sanctuary of Misericordia on the world stage. About 11,000 visitors come to the Borjana district every year and the ‘Ecce Homo’ has raised about 300,000 euros until July. A money invested in the maintenance of the sanctuary, the salary of two guides (two positions created by the phenomenon) and in scholarships for the elderly in the Hospital Sancti Spiritus residence. Both this center and the complex in which the painting is located are owned by the Fundación Benéfica Sancti Spiritus y Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Misericordia, whose patronage is formed by the municipal company.

Arilla recalls that the idea of ​​making a film around the phenomenon is not new: “We already had a first attempt a few years ago, we signed the image rights, but it didn’t get the necessary funds and it stopped.” This time it was ‘a comedy’. Now he explains that the scenario is different.

Also a few years ago, in 2016, Cecilia was still living next door to the sanctuary house when she opened the door to some strangers who wanted to meet her. She didn’t know it then, but director Alejandro Amenábar was in her room. That encouraged the possibility of shooting a film based on the painter’s life and her intervention in the work of Elías García. However, Arilla points out that the director himself, with other projects in progress, would have ruled it out. At least at that moment.

Another project that has already been completed and that will see the light of day in the near future is a documentary that will be broadcast on AppleTV. A recording team traveled to the Borjana neighborhood in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic. “They have already paid us for the image rights and they already have a free hand to broadcast,” explains the mayor, who applauds these kinds of projects that “are part” of the cultural and tourism wealth of the municipality on an international level. .

Interest in Cecilia Giménez and the ‘Ecce Homo’ does not wane ten years after the lights came out, but the truth is that they are not easy days at the sanctuary, which is the night of August 14 in the middle of their celebrations. The fire, which started a day earlier in the city of Añón de Moncayo, has set fire to 6,000 hectares. Of these, about 1,000 correspond to the forested mass in the Borja area. “From below (from Borja) the impression was that everything was on fire,” Arilla recalls.

At first daylight it turned out that the city center had been saved and that the party banners were still hanging on the square. In the environment, however, ‘the impact is brutal’. The affected municipalities will process the declaration as a disaster area together with the provincial council of Zaragoza. In Borja and the sanctuary, they are already proposing ideas such as creating a recreational, sporting and tourist space serving as a safety zone between the neighborhood and the future forest or a vantage point in the highest part of the ordeal, destroyed, from where it is now a glimpse of the whole valley.

This situation, Arilla explains, has not affected visits to ‘Ecce Homo’. The neighbors, who had walked out of their homes on August 14, returned on the 17th, and the church reopened to the public on the afternoon of the 18th. “People were already waiting outside,” says the mayor. The next day they had another 100 visits, “normal for the month of August.”

On September 10, a commemorative act will be held in Borja, which will appreciate the work of the media in dealing with the media phenomenon and will praise the figures of Elías García and Cecilia Giménez. The painter, who is now 91 years old, lives in a house and does not remember well what happened ten years ago. However, it is a fact that today, as then, the phenomenon of ‘Ecce Homo’ seems inflammable.

Source: La Verdad

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