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Presented in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish Society
of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) and the Spanish Ministry of Education and
Culture (ICAA).
We continue our tradition of presenting an annual program of the
ever-evolving and expanding Spanish cinema. This year, in addition to a
survey of recent Spanish movies, we're spotlighting six films by the esteemed
Ventura Pons, as well as scheduling special screenings of visionary artist
Iván Zulueta's 1979 cult film RAPTURE. Among our selections, we are pleased
to offer audiences examples of emerging regional cinema, from Catalùnya,
Basque country and Andalusia. As usual, our schedule includes auteurs
familiar from previous Spanish Cinema Now programs (e.g., Icíar Bollain,
Vicente Aranda, Manuel Gómez Pereira) as well as newcomers such as Benito
Zambrano and Marc Recha. The Spanish movie industry shows no signs of slowing
down; indeed, home-made product is drawing larger audiences in Spain while
still making friends and winning awards overseas. It looks as though we can
look forward to Spanish Cinema Now and forever!
Spotlight on Ventura Pons
One of the most remarkable effects of Spain's return to democracy has been
the flowering of the various national cultures which had for so long been
suppressed under Franco. A tremendous renaissance in literature and theater
can be found in Catalùnya, Galicia and Euskadi (the Basque region), and the
past two decades have witnessed the emergence or re-emergence of distinctive
cinemas from those regions as well. This year, we present as part of Spanish
Cinema Now a special focus on Ventura Pons, easily the most critically and
commercially successful director of the Catalán cinema. Born in Barcelona in
1945, Pons came into the cinema as a documentarist, filming a remarkable
portrait of a famous transvestite (OCAÑA, INTERMITTENT PORTRAIT) that pushed
the limits of free expression in the late Seventies. In the Eighties, Pons
formed his own production company and began making a series of provocative
urban comedies that detailed the changes in the look and the lifestyle of his
beloved Barcelona ("I'm very Barcelona, just as Woody Allen is very
Manhattan."). His recent work, such as WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT and CARESSES,
draws on the vibrant Catalan literary and theater scenes. Join us for this
first U.S. salute to one of Spain's most popular and unpredictable directors.
(Titles in the Pons retrospective are in bold type throughout this page.)
AMIC / AMAT BELOVED / FRIEND
Ventura Pons, 1999; 90m
A dying homosexual professor of medieval literature (Josep Maria Pou) decides
to write his will in the form of an essay, a reflection on what legacies he
wishes to leave those he loves, and stores it in an all-too-accessible
computer. As a result, his oldest friend (Mario Gas) and recently acquired
protégé (newcomer David Selvas, as an amoral student who turns out to be a
male hustler) react quite negatively to his best wishes for them--and
internecine warfare erupts. In this mature work, Pons explores delicate
psychosexual connections, mining tragic insights out of this small
community's confrontation with the facts of death and loss. With performances
worthy of the theater; and dialogue in Catalán.
Fri Dec 10: 1, 5:15 & 9:30; Sun Dec 12: 4:15
SOLAS / ALONE
Benito Zambrano, 1999; 98m
(The director is scheduled to attend.)
A country girl (Ana Fernández), oppressed by an abusive dad, moves to the
city to try for a new life. A familiar story: alcoholic Maria soon finds
herself poor, pregnant, alone. While her father is hospitalized, mother
(magnificent Maria Galiana) comes to visit, reconnects with her daughter, and
somehow emotionally resurrects a lonely old guy living next door. This
trinity of seemingly lost souls finds surprising salvation. A "feminist" vote
for unexpected community among ordinary people in the midst of urban
isolation, SOLAS, Zambrano's first feature film, won the People's Choice
Award at this year's Berlin Film Festival and became a runaway box office hit
in Spain.
Fri Dec 10: 3; Sat Dec 11: 7:15; Sun Dec 12: 8:30
GOYA IN BORDEAUX
Carlos Saura, 1999; 98m
(Carlos Saura is scheduled to attend.)
1828: Francisco Goya y Lucientes--82, the father of modern painting--wanders
through the foggy streets of Bordeaux in his nightshirt, railing against old
age, the passing of his turbulent life "like a gust of wind." Following the
great artist's memory into the past, via flashbacks, Saura gorgeously
illustrates his passionate journey in the warm colors of the painter's own
palette. Goya's artistic evolution is illuminated by the actual canvases,
sketches and lithographs that marked his progress. First among contemporary
cinematographers, Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor)
perfectly visualizes the painter's era, aided by Pierre-Louis Thevenet's
theatrical set design. Sophisticated camerawork, rich lighting and Saura's
typically inspired direction makes GOYA IN BORDEAUX a powerful celebration of
art and the artist. With the great Francisco Rabal as Goya in old age, Jose
Coronado as the young artist, and Maribel Verdu as the Duchess of Alba.
Sat Dec 11: 5 & 9:30; Sun Dec 12: 6:15; Mon Dec 13: 1
ARTIST BY ARTIST: SPANISH FILMMAKERS ENCOUNTER POPULAR SPANISH MUSIC
approximately 120m
One of Spanish Cinema Now's co-presenters, the SGAE (Sociedad General de
Authores y Editores), has produced a fascinating series of filmed portraits
of leading contemporary Spanish singers and musicians made by leading Spanish
directors. Each filmmaker approached his subject in a distinctive way; these
portraits include interviews, performance footage, old newsreels, as well as
provocative discussions of the meaning and role of popular culture in today's
Spain. We will present four installments from this ongoing series: Pilar Miró
on protest singer Victor Manuel; Imanol Uribe on Basque singer Mikel Laboa;
José Luise García Sánchez on Joaquin Sabina, and Ventura Pons on Catalán
singer Maria del Mar Bonet.
Tues Dec 14: 2:50 & 7:15
LA ROSSA DEL BAR / THE BLONDE AT THE BAR
Ventura Pons, 1986; 90m
After forming his own production company, Els Films de la Rambla, in 1985,
Pons embarked on a series of delightful urban comedies that explored (and at
times exposed) the rapidly
changing rules for romance in his beloved Barcelona. The first of these, THE BLONDE AT THE BAR, is the story of Mario, a man stuck in a marital rut who
one night seeks adventure in a seedy bar. He meets a beautiful if somewhat
hysterical woman, but his efforts to interest her come to naught until he
introduces her to the world of pornographic photo-novels--an interest that
soon turns to an obsession. There's a wonderful, spontaneous feel to much of
the action which, together with the use of well-known Barcelona locales,
gives the film a gritty authenticity.
Mon Dec 13: 3:15; Tues Dec 14: 1, 5:15 & 9:45
OCAÑA, RETRAT INTERMITENT / OCAÑA, INTERMITTENT PORTRAIT
Ventura Pons, 1978; 90m
Made on a shoestring, Pons' first major work is a remarkable and touching
look at the life and world of one of Barcelona's most famous and outrageous
transvestites. An Andalusian performance artist and political activist, Ocaña
seemed to unite several of the various margins of society in the immediate
post-Franco period, bearing witness in his frequent, extravagant walks
through the city to a spirit of rebelliousness which years of dictatorship
had been unable to squelch. A milestone in Spanish cinema, and still a great
cult favorite, OCAÑA helped open a dialog on sexual politics that continues
to develop today.
Wed Dec 15: 1, 5 & 9
EL PORQUÉ DE LAS COSAS / WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
Ventura Pons, 1994; 92m
Pons adapts 15 stories by acclaimed novelist and short-story writer Quim
Monzó to the screen. (Pons admires Monzó's "mixture of registers, realistic
and lyrical on the one hand, fantastic and grotesque on the other...." This
brilliant tapestry finds cinematic expression for Will Power, Wisdom,
Honesty, Submission, Competition, Passion, Spite, along with other
quintessential human characteristics. These spicy slices of life are full of
humor, sarcasm and irony; Pons brings them to the screen with enormous
elegance and practicality.
Wed Dec 15: 3 & 7
LISBOA / LISBON
Antonio Hernández, Spain / Argentina; 97m
This thriller starts out with a bang: on a major highway, a family is killed
in a car wreck and travelling porn salesman Joao (Sergi Lopez) picks up an
elegant hitchhiker (Carmen Maura) whom he is soon carnally enjoying in a
public restroom. Though Joao's disconcerted by Berta's gun, his new inamorata
has a perfectly plausible explanation for going armed to Lisbon. But by the
time he discovers that his mysterious lady's son, daughter, father and
husband (Federico Luppi) are hot on their trail--and not for the most savory
of reasons--this road movie's long gone into conspiracy plots and counterplots.
Thurs Dec 16: 1 & 9:20; Fri Dec 17: 3:15 & 7:30
ENTRE LAS PIERNAS / BETWEEN YOUR LEGS
Manuel Gómez Pereira, 1999; 115m
A scriptwriter (Javier Bardem) and a talkshow host (sensual Victoria Abril)
meet and strike sparks at a group therapy session for sex addicts. Their
evolving relationship drives them deeper into an Hitchcockian coil of stories
and characters: a mysterious airport Scheherazade, erotic audio tapes, a
corpse in a car trunk, a movie director who secretly sells porn reels of his
stars, and a string of sexual lies, infidelities and revenge. A stylish
neo-noir thriller, BETWEEN YOUR LEGS romps through contemporary movie-made
libidos, backed by music that emulates the great Bernard Herrmann scores.
Thurs Dec 16: 3; Fri Dec 17: 1, 5:15 & 9:30
BABAOUO
Manuel Cussó-Ferrer, 1999; 70m
Based on a 1932 scenario by Salvador Dalí, this film completes a trilogy that
includes Dalí's surrealist collaborations with Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou
(1928) and L'Age d'or (1930). Set symbolically in wartime Europe, the film
opens with Babaouo receiving an urgent message from his beloved Matilde, who
is locked away in a castle in Portugal. After overcoming many obstacles,
Babaouo manages to reach her and together they discover the mystery of a huge
funeral shroud. But that's only the beginning of the couple's weird,
exciting, sometimes fatal adventures.... "A surrealist road movie filled with
familiar Dalí obsessions: flat watches, fried eggs, female exhibitionism,
paranoid images, contemporary hysteria, giant breads and giraffes of fire,"
writes El Pais' Gerard Bague.
Sat Dec 18: 4:15; Mon Dec 20: 1 & 4:30
CELOS / JEALOUSY
Vicente Aranda, 1999; 105m
A compelling story about the ugly evolution of obsessive jealousy: beautiful
Carmen, a fruit factory laborer (Aitana Sanchez Gijón, giving a particularly
affecting performance), plans to marry Antonio, a truck driver (Daniel
Gimenez Cacho). By sheer accident, Antonio finds a photograph in a wrecked
car, a picture of Carmen embraced by another man. At first just curious,
Antonio cannot leave the matter alone; he interrogates Carmen's best friend
and ends by forcing his now-wife to introduce him to her former lover. As
usual, Aranda demonstrates strong empathy for the woman's point of view; he
deftly dissects and measures the way Antonio's killing emotion erodes the
couple's affections.
Sat Dec 18: 5:45 & 9:50; Sun Dec 19: 8:30
FLORES DE OTRO MUNDO / FLOWERS FROM ANOTHER WORLD
Icíar Bollain, 1999; 106m
Santa Eulalia, a Spanish village lacking marriageable women, decides to throw
a bachelors' blowout-a party to which single ladies from all around the
country will be invited, chauffeured by chartered bus. Needless to say, a
mixed, very colorful bouquet of "flowers"--from the Caribbean and
elsewhere--delivers drama and beauty in Icíar Bollain's distaff report on war
and peace among men and women, along with socio-economic stress,
culture-clash and race relations in rural Spain. Based on real events.
Sat Dec 18: 7:50; Sun Dec 19: 4:15; Tues Dec 21: 1
EL ARBOL DE LAS CEREZAS / THE CHERRY TREE
Marc Recha, 1998; 93m
"Thirteen stories which intertwine to form a chorus. Notes about 13 people
who live in the shadow of a landscape. This landscape which slowly configures
them until they disappear and only the memory remains. Then, the landscape
becomes the main character. The trees, the streams, the wind, the rain. and
the landscape's sounds, too.... Using all these elements as narrative
structures." - Marc Recha
Angel envisions heaven as an orchard of cherry trees, a fertile landscape
full of promise that is just the opposite of his unrewarding existence in a
remote Catalán village. Most of his family is gone or going--although his
sister finds the possibility of roots in the new village doctor. Director
Recha gives us an unsentimental glimpse, through the eyes of a lonely child,
at the way people look and act as they endure lives of quiet desperation.
Sun Dec 19: 6:30; Mon Dec 20: 2:30 & 8:15
ARREBATO / RAPTURE
Iván Zulueta, 1979; 105m
An exhibition of Iván Zulueta's radical poster art accompanied this year's
Toronto International Film Festival which showcased RAPTURE, one of three
feature films directed by this elusive genius. Ramiro Puerta writes: "A cult
film in Spain, RAPTURE could easily be labeled a vampire film as it employs a
narrative structure typical of this genre: seduction, possession and
transformation. But there are no vampires or blood. A filmmaker finishing his
second vampire movie, José confronts an existential crisis, caused in part by
nonstop drug use and his affair with the star of his first film (Cecilia
Roth, from Almodóvar's All About My Mother). When a strange young man opens
his eyes to new possibilities, Jose becomes obsessed with an experimental
approach to filmmaking.... RAPTURE encapsulates its era's social trends,
while demonstrating how unique and ahead of its time Zulueta's vision really
was."
Mon Dec 20: 6; Tues Dec 21: 3
ACTRIUS / ACTRESSES
Ventura Pons, 1997; 100m
"A young actress trying to earn the lead role in a play about a long-dead
theatrical grande dame seeks out advice from three aging actresses who were
all students of the diva in their youth. One of the three is a celebrated
diva, one is a television comedian and one dubs voices for film. As they meet
for caustic dinner-conversation (and each in turn gets interviewed by the
wide-eyed young woman), it soon becomes apparent that they have very
different memories of what transpired when they all were 20 and competing for
the coveted role of the ingénue, Iphegenia. They also have different ideas
about what it means to be a performer and the sacrifices one should make for
the sake of art. Exclamations about the meaning of acting and "giving it all"
to art abound, but the three ladies of the stage (Nuria Espert, Rosa Maria
Sardá and Anna Lizaran) are so wonderful that it can be forgiven. While Pons
has clearly created three very different types, he has avoided making them
caricatures--and ultimately makes an interesting statement about the insular
nature of the artist." - Malene Arpe, eye WEEKLY
Wed Dec 22: 1, 5:10 & 9:15
CARICIAS / CARESSES
Ventura Pons, 1997; 104m
Acclaimed by Eliot Stein (Village Voice) as one of 1998's "10 Best," CARESSES
unreels as a roundelay of contemporary lust and love, featuring 11
interlocking scenes that involve two characters, one of whom carries forward
into the next scene, until the chain comes full circle. The emotions
generated by human hits and misses run the gamut from funny to raging to sexy
to tearful; fathers, mothers, sons, lesbians, couples--all make surprising
connections or disconnects. Pons encourages his lovers and other strangers to
reveal their histories through dialogue and gesture, investing the film with
a provocative ambiguity that slowly seasons into insights about human
relationships on the millennial cusp.
Wed Dec 22: 3 & 7:10
LOS LOBOS DE WASHINGTON / WASHINGTON WOLVES
Mariano Barroso, 1999; 93m
A blackly hilarious comedy about three losers who conspire to break into
bigtime success by building a parking garage; trouble is, when push comes to
shove, Miguel (Eduardo Fernandez), Alberto (Javier Bardem) and Claudio (José
Sancho) have absolutely no qualms--of friendship or ethics--about selling each
other out. There are plenty of pushes and lots of shoves in the series of
dangerous, yet very funny, adventures which follow. Director Barroso can't be
faulted in his deft creation of the kind of urban milieux where the weakest
links in the food chain desperately scheme for upward mobility.
Thurs Dec 23: 5:15 & 9:30; Fri Dec 24: 3:15
LÁGRIMAS NEGRAS / BLACK TEARS
Ricardo Franco and Fernando Bauluz, 1999; 105m
After he and his girlfriend are mugged in the street by two young women,
documentary filmmaker Andrés (Fele Martinez) is driven to discover what
motivates such violence and tracks down one of the perpetrators. The daughter
of a wealthy family, Isabel (Ariadne Gil) is at times possessed by Ana, the
darkside of her personality; Andrés falls passionately--and obsessively--in
love with her, believing that he can heal Isabel's dangerously split soul.
Question is, will Andrés--representative of sane, aboveground life--give up
everything to follow his Eurydice into her psychic hell? Ricardo Franco was
so ill that his friend Bauluz completed BLACK TEARS; one of Spain's
best-loved filmmakers, Franco died last year.
Thurs Dec 23: 3 & 7:15; Fri Dec 24: 1 & 5:15
PEPE GUINDO
Manuel Iborra, 1998; 98m
One of cinema's greatest living actors--Fernando Fernán Gómez, recently
acclaimed for his work in EL ABUELO--gives a tour-de-force performance in this
intense, heart-breaking rendering of a musician's thoughts, memories and
confessions as he faces his final days. Essentially a monolog, with brief
contributions by Antonio Resines, Jorge Sanz and Verónica Forqué, PEPE GUINDO
takes us on a tour of its title character's life, with musical interludes
signaling changes in styles and locations but in a deeper sense reflecting
aspects of Pepe's life and loves. The result is a fascinating hybrid of
theater and film, where the lines between what one remembers or imagines to have
happened over the years and the events themselves become increasingly blurred.
Thurs Dec 23: 1; Fri Dec 24: 7:30
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