Over a hundred years ago, Spanish neurobiologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal made groundbreaking discoveries about the structure of the brain. Using the Golgi silver staining technique, he identified a specialized cell type—the neuron—that binds all the matter together. His surreal hand-drawn paintings illustrated how electrical signals were received and transmitted across cerebral time and space.

The series (under the working title "El Beso") is divided into five parts, each is adapted from one of Cajal's science fiction stories published together as Cuentos de vacaciones: Narraciones pseudocientíficas (Vacation Stories: Pseudoscientific Narrative).

Now in development, I am conducting a series of science/film experiments to craft an atypical docu-fiction Cajal biopic. Cajal on screen is a time traveler that reminisces about his past and invokes the future through his dreams and fictions. He wakes up to see that the brain that he helped understand has now been fully mapped and he participates in envisioning a present-future of the connectome.

The title of the series comes from the term ‘beso protoplasmático, ”the original poetic name given by Cajal for the cellular contact between two neurons. It was never accepted by the scientific community who decided to go with the term synapse instead

The Cajal series is currently development as part of the 2023-24 Film Study Center Fellowship at Harvard Center. I encourage you to check regularly the Field Notes for this project.