The smell of films. “Mon manege a moi” I could swear the first time I saw it was in a film by Herzog, since when it has appeared on a number of other occasions. It happened on a patch of waste ground, in a car cemetery or perhaps somewhere that reminded me of one, or perhaps not. It doesn’t really matter. Close to this deserted landscape there were some fairground booths. In one of these, in a little cabin like one of those cheap peepshows, we found ourselves witnesses to the anguished and cruel dance performed by a chicken in a space delimited by stiff curtains of fake velvet and lit, of course, by red bulbs. The chicken’s claws cling, with little success, to a revolving platform, in a vain attempt to gain some kind of stability. The smell of the place was not recorded on film. For me, it always be a cocktail of enchiladas, Mexican beer and air-freshener spray. Carlos Pazos