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Radiating out from one of the world's most beautiful cities, Barcelona, Catalunya has had its own language, cultural traditions and extraordinary achievement in the visual arts. It has also been a center for creative filmmaking that has often produced innovative works of great merit, works that are both part of Spanish film history but which also constitute a distinctive stream within that history. Barcelona was arguably the capital of filmmaking in Spain during the silent era, relinquishing that position only with the coming of sound in the early 30s. After the Civil War the use of the Catalan language in any kind of public discourse was forbidden by the Franco government. The 60s in Catalunya were marked by the emergence of what became known as the Barcelona School, a loose collection of filmmakers whose works reflected everything from a fascination with the world of design and fashion to a commitment to upturn traditional notions of storytelling in the cinema. Seen today, the films of the Barcelona School seem closer in spirit to American avant-garde work of the time than to the European modernism of the French New Wave, Antonioni or Bergman.
The death of Franco and the reestablishment of democracy in Spain led to an outpouring of nationalist spirit in Catalan cinema, which once again could be in the Catalan language. Works such as The Burned City and Diamond Plaza broke box-office records, and their screenings at times became political events. Catalunya continued to be a haven for some of the most singular, offbeat filmmakers in Spain, such as Bigas Luna and Agustí Villaronga, whose films combined the anarchic streak of 60s cinema with pronounced use of genre, especially horror. Beginning with his extraordinary documentary Ocaña, Intermittent Portrait, Ventura Pons created one of the most distinctive filmographies in contemporary Spanish cinema, examining and challenging sexual identities and stereotypes while drawing rich and often hilarious portraits of contemporary Catalans (and others). Director Marc Recha in The Cherry Tree and other works has taken the Catalan countryside as his setting and his subject, showing the dark currents that often run beneath the seemingly tranquil and often gorgeous landscapes. And José Luis Guerin is that rare experimental filmmaker whose works attract considerable audiences, especially his marvelous Work in Progress.
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One of the first Catalan-language films released after the death of Franco, The Burned City begins with a steamship coming into dock in Barcelona harbor; on board are soldiers and former colonists from Cuba. Among them are Frederic Palau and his soldier friend Josep; Frederic belongs to a well-established family in Barcelona; Josep's only "capital" is himself and his ambition. Upon arrival, Frederic returns to the family home with his friend, who soon catches the eye of Remei, Frederic's sister. The fortunes of the Palau family and the emotional entanglements of its children are set against the rapidly radicalizing background of Catalan nationalism, given new impetus since the loss of its overseas colonies has brought the central Madrid government to a crisis point. Director Antoni Ribas has a sure hand with his large cast, which includes Angela Molina, José Luis López Vàzquez, Francesc Casares and Xavier Elorriaga.
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Fri Jan 27: 1
Sat Feb 4: 8:15
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The great Carmen Amaya - for many the finest flamenco dancer who ever lived - performed in this cinematic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet just months before she died. Set in the Romna ("Gypsy") community on the outskirts of Barcelona, the story begins as the eyes of Juana (Sara Lezana), from the Zorango clan, meet those of Rafael (Daniel Martin), of the rival Taranto clan, at a wedding; it's love at first sight, but both are aware of just how impossible that love is. When Rafael's mother, Angustias (Amaya), discovers her son's love for Juana, she's at first horrified at his betrayal of the clan but gradually is won over and agrees to act as a go-between. Thus is set in motion a series of events, of missed encounters and false impressions, that will lead inevitably to the tragic finale. The dance numbers - which also feature future flamenco star Antonio Gades in a crucial role - are seamlessly woven into the dramatic action, not so much interrupting the story but accenting it. A remarkable film, far ahead of its time in many ways, and of course a rare opportunity to savor the artistry of the unforgettable Amaya.
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Fri Jan 27: 4
Sat Jan 28: 9:20
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On a lonely North Sea oil rig, a woman arrives to take care of a worker seriously burned in an accident. She is Hanna (Sarah Polley) - not really a nurse, but someone who hopes that her mission will fill in the void left by so much of the rest of her life; her patient is Josef (Tim Robbins), garrulous and outgoing, and temporarily blinded. Over the days and weeks of his recuperation, their contact will lead to each one revealing long-kept secrets. Hanna will also become part of the rig's very special community, which includes Simon (Javier Camara), a Spanish cook whose attempts at haute cuisine are rarely appreciated, and Dimitri (Sverre Anker Ousdal), a loner who senses that he and Hanna share a hidden bond. The Secret Life of Words again teams Barcelona-native Isabel Coixet with Sarah Polley, star of her earlier My Life Without Me, who "gives a wonderfully searching performance, as a woman in a state of extreme isolation." (Variety). Also starring are Julie Christie and Leonor Watling.
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Fri Jan 27: 7
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The cinema spread quickly in Spain; by 1914 there were 900 establishments showing films, as well as a number of traveling film shows. In the first decades of the new medium, Barcelona established itself as the center of Spanish filmmaking, a position it would keep, although not without challenge from Madrid, up until the Civil War. Films in every genre were produced - special effects or trick films, melodramas, comedies and films d'art, so-called art films, usually adaptations of stage plays shot in a highly theatrical style. This program features The Hero of Can Pruna (L'Hereu de Can Pruna, Segundo de Chomón, 1904), a cinematic dramatization of a sensational crime, based on a real event; Barcelona, Pearl of the Mediteranean (Barcelona, Perla del Mediterraneo, 1907, Joan Codina), part travelog, part dramatic narrative making use of actual locations; Don Juan Tenorio (1908, Alberto Marro and Ricardo de Bañas), a version of the ever-popular romantic drama; and Fatal Love (Amor que mata, 1911, Joan Codina), an unsettling tale of revenge scripted and photographed by Fructuoso Gelabert, another key Spanish film pioneer.
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Sat Jan 28: 1
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Lorenzo Llobet Gracia's sole feature, Life in Shadows, stands as one of most remarkable films ever made - in Spain or perhaps anywhere. The film begins at the turn of the century; as she's watching a demonstration of that new moving pictures machine, a young woman gives birth right there to her first child. Her child, a son called Carlos, grows up completely crazy for the movies; he collects everything he can, and as soon as he can get his hands on a camera, he starts making his own films. July 18th, 1936: the Spanish Civil War erupts, and Carlos (now played by the great Fernando Fernàn Gómez) goes out to record the first images of the fighting; returning home, he finds his wife dead from a sniper's bullet and his world destroyed. Because of the movies, he lost all that he had held dear - but only the movies can give him back his life. The film's climax, involving an encounter between Carlos and Hitchcock's Rebecca, has to be seen to be believed.
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Sat Jan 28: 3
Tue Jan 31: 3
Tue Jan 31: 9
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Recent Catalan cinema is perhaps best known through the work of Ventura Pons, whose insightful, funny and often provocative portraits of his native Barcelona have won him fans the world over. Based on a novel by Lluis-Anton Baulenas, Anita features a bravura performance by a longtime Pons favorite, the wonderful Rosa Maria Sardà, in the title role. For thirty years Anita has worked as a cashier at an old movie house; now, new owners have decided to knock it down and turn it into a multiplex. Out of a job and terrified of her future, Anita finds herself drawn each day to her former workplace, now a construction site, until one day she spies Antoni (José Coronado), a handsome young bulldozer driver. Through Antoni, Anita will discover that indeed there can be life after the movies. Pons finds just the right pitch for the film, allowing us to laugh along with Anita at her discovery of sides to her personality she scarcely knew existed while reminding us of the hint of desperation that's always just below her surface calm.
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Sat Jan 28: 5
Tue Jan 31: 5
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One of the most impressive talents to have emerged in Spain in the past decade, Marc Recha creates a finely observed, intimate cinema that draws viewers into the very texture of his characters' lives. Set in a remote Catalan village, The Cherry Tree focuses on Angel, a young boy living with his grandmother and sister; his mother is off working in a circus, his father is long gone. Angel fears that his grandmother will soon be going as well, to a better place far away that he imagines full of the cherry trees he takes such delight in drawing. His sister also thinks of leaving, and has tried to do so by casting her lot with a number of men who eventually disappointed her. But then a new doctor moves into the village. Recha presents these lives and those of their fellow villagers through the eyes of Angel, who will take from all the experiences he sees a sense of what he can expect from life.
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Sat Jan 28: 7:15
Wed Feb 1: 7:15
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"I did not want to describe the truth of what happened during the Civil War, only to register memories of it." - Jaime Camino
After Franco's death (1975), a number of films, novels and other works were released that began to explore the Civil War from perspectives that just a few years earlier would have been forbidden. Jaime Camino's magisterial The Old Memory is perhaps the key work here - not so much for its particular position or revelations about the Civil War, but more for the way it addresses the processes by which historical events are recalled and put to use. Weaving together documentary period footage with interviews with many of the surviving figures who either appear or are often referred to in that footage, Camino reveals the gaps and contradictions that emerge between the records of history and our memories of them. Shifting political realities, later revelations, current attitudes - these and other developments have profound effect on how we can know the past. Among those we see and hear in the film are former dictator Primo de Rivera, Christian Social Democrat Gil Robles, and anarchist Frederica Montseny, but perhaps the most remarkable moments belong to Dolores Ibárruri, "La Pasionaria," whom Camino had to travel to Moscow to film.
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Sun Jan 29: 3:00
Wed Feb 8: 8:30
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"If we can't be Victor Hugo, we'll be Mallarmé." So went one of the slogans associated with the Barcelona School - a fascinating film movement that emerged at the end of the 60s that saw lyrical revolution as the alternative to the era's government censorship. An anarchic cinematic collage, Fata Morgana mixes Pop Art imagery, performance art, traces of Richard Lester's Beatles movies and a touch of Antonioni into a heady mix that occasionally becomes a kind of detective film. The face of Gim, played by fashion model Teresa Gimpera, haunts the city, but Gim herself seems to be under surveillance - followed by a garbage truck, menaced by a blind man, and confronted by a group of five young men who seem to like nothing more than staring at her. Made up of a series of loosely connected episodes, Fata Morgana alternates between the totally public world of media and advertising and a private world made up of its own hidden codes and secret gestures.
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Sun Jan 29: 6:30
Sat Feb 4: 6:15
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"In the City is about the hidden desires of a group of thirtysomethings in Barcelona and the confusion they experience in the traditional, socially accepted lives they have chosen. We are invited into a circle of seemingly close friends; however, as we listen to their conversations with each other, we realize it is the spectator alone who is allowed into their most private worlds... Gay exposes the duality of human nature, the inconsistencies we all share and the difficulty of meeting other people's expectations. (He) treats his characters with the utmost tenderness and respect as he brings his profound observations to these stories of modern life and love." - Diana Sanchez, 2003 Toronto International Film Festival
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Sun Jan 29: 8:30
Thurs Feb 2: 6:45
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A young man steps off a bus in downtown Barcelona; shots ring out, and moments later that young man lies dead on the sidewalk. At first there seems to be no motive nor clues - possibly a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But gradually the two police detectives assigned to the case uncover a web of intrigue that spreads out from a certain post box in the central post office. Ten years after the Civil War, the Spanish film industry had re-grouped and reorganized, and was already producing a steady stream of works in a range of genres. A solid "police procedural," in which we closely follow the investigation, Post Box 1001 was clearly inspired by works such as The House on 92nd Street and Call Northside 777, Hollywood crime films that mixed real locations with staged dramatic action.
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Tue Jan 31: 1
Tue Jan 31: 7
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Held up for seven years before it was released, Far from the Trees seems like a perfect successor to Luis Buñuel's Land Without Bread. Like that earlier film, it is a kind of impressionistic travelogue that shows a Spain far from the beaten paths of the tourist resorts; not only poverty but the persistence of superstitions and occult beliefs captured by the film rebuke the image of a forward-looking, modern Spain that by the 60s was being promoted by the Franco regime. Esteva Grewe largely allows the images and juxtapositions to speak for themselves, giving the film a lyrical feeling that somewhat softens its social criticism - though obviously not enough for the censors.
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Wed Feb 1: 9:15
Thurs Feb 2: 3
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If the new Spanish cinema coming out of Madrid - the work of people like Saura, Berlanga, Bardem, Martín Patino and others - saw their socially conscious films as an alternative to the standard Spanish commercial fare, the Barcelona School offered an alternative to what they saw as the aesthetically unadventurous works of their Madrid contemporaries. Dante avoids any kind of traditional plot, but instead keeps reimagining its central couple (Serena Vergano and Enrique Irazoqui) in a variety of different settings and roles. The action, such as it is, is not so much propelled forward as moved back and forth, as a kind of structure emerges from the visual rhymes, musical references, and repetitions that occur from scene to scene. The Barcelona School would continue for another six or seven years, producing about twenty major works; its members would eventually move into other forms of filmmaking, or out of filmmaking altogether. Largely forgotten for years, the School has recently been rediscovered by a new generation of scholars, filmmakers and filmgoers.
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Thurs Feb 2: 5
Thurs Feb 2: 9
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José Zorilla's classic drama of reckless lust and final retribution has been a perennial favorite on the Spanish stage and screen. This 1922 version pulled out the stops in terms of sets, costumes, and bold, sweeping action; the Filmoteca of Catalunya has now beautifully restored the film, and we're delighted to be able to include it. Spanish actor Fortunio Bonanova stars as the intrepid Don, who on the basis of a bet with a friend sets out to seduce Doña Inès, a young novice in a convent, but a string of unexpected events leads him into a duel and then to flee Seville. The poor, betrayed Inès dies of a broken heart. Years later he returns, but finds his every step haunted by the spirit of the woman he abandoned. This version proved so popular that in the mid-30s the Baños brothers released it again, this time with a synchronized soundtrack; unhappily, the work was soon banned as immoral by Franco.
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Sun Feb 5: 2
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Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona / Reportaje de movimento revolucionario en Barcelona Mateo Santos, 1936
Help Madrid! / Ayuda a Madrid!, Félix Marquet, 1936
The Burial of Durruti / L'enterrament de Durruti, CNT-FAI, 1936
Heroic Division / División heroica, Félix Marquet and Adrian Porchet, 1937
Catalunya Martyred / Catalunya màrtir, J. Marsillach, 1938
A rare opportunity to see a number of works created in Catalunya during the Spanish Civil War; each film an invaluable record of the times, created at the moment when the battle between the Republic and Franco's forces was raging all over Spain. Report on the Revolutionary Movement was one of the first films produced by the anarcho-syndicalists, showing the mounting of defenses against the Franco forces; Help Madrid! details the help being sent by Catalans to the besieged Spanish capital; The Burial of Durruti records a burial that became a rallying point for the resistance; Heroic Division looks at the battle to take Huesca; and Catalunya Martyred captures the terrible effects of Franco's aerial bombardment of Barcelona.
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Sun Feb 5: 4:45
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This modernist updating of the detective film begins as reporter José Ditirambo is hired by the bitter widow of a recently deceased writer to find the young woman who, according to the widow, destroyed her husband's life. Unsure of how far he wants to go with his assignment, Ditirambo nevertheless begins to assemble a wide variety of possible connections to the young woman. He visits one of her ex-lovers, the millionaire Palacios, who give him a suitcase full of money for her; another connection gives him a gun with which he should kill her. "I have the impression that the world was created just for me" confesses Ditirambo at one point, and that suspicion that everything is predestined runs through the film, as everyone eventually is revealed to be part of someone else's plot.
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Sun Feb 5: 6:45
Tue Feb 7: 4:20
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Made on a shoestring, Pons's 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 embody in his/her person several of the margins of Spanish society in the immediate post-Franco era, bearing witness in his frequent, extravagant walks down Barcelona's Ramblas to a spirit of rebelliousness that years of dictatorship had been unable to squelch. A milestone in Spanish cinema, and still a great cult favorite, Ocaña helped open a dialogue on sexual politics that continues to develop today.
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Sun Feb 5: 8:30
Tue Feb 7: 8:30
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Another watershed work for Catalan cinema, Diamond Plaza was based on a novel by Mercè Redoreda that many others had tried to adapt to the screen but failed. A rich historical fresco that stretches from the late 20s up through the early 50s, the film focuses on Colometa, beautifully played by Sílvia Munt, a young woman whose life registers everything from the euphoria that accompanied the declaration of the Spanish Republic to the devastation and economic hardship that defined the years following the Civil War. For the first time, many Spaniards from all regions saw their day-to-day lives during the darkest years of Franco captured on screen. An immensely powerful work, as well as an inspiring example of the new freedom Spaniards at last felt when addressing the recent past.
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Tue Feb 7: 2
Tue Feb 7: 6:15
Sun Feb 12: 3
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"They don't make art-shockers like this anymore. In a Glass Cage is a great film, but I'm too scared to show it to my friends." - John Waters
Warning: this film contains images that some audiences might find upsetting.
In a house set off by itself on a lonely stretch of coast lives Klaus, a former medical officer in a concentration camp, his wife Griselda and her daughter Rena. Since suffering an accident, Klaus has been paralyzed and forced to stay in an iron lung. One day a young man, Angelo, shows up at their door, looking for work; they try to dissuade him, but it turns out Angelo has some information on one of Klaus's past crimes, so they allow him to stay and become Klaus's nurse. Gradually, it appears that Angelo has come not so much to care for Klaus as to learn from him; he's clearly bent on following in his master's nefarious footsteps, pursuing his model to the end of the line. Still banned in Australia, In a Glass Cage is an extraordinarily upsetting film; Villaronga so carefully and powerfully creates an atmosphere of total depravity, a world with no rules or boundaries, that watching the story unfold is profoundly unsettling - these are people completely aware of who they are and what they've done who reveal not a shred of conscience. Not for the faint-hearted, but not to be missed.
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Wed Feb 8: 1
Sat Feb 11: 9:45
Sun Feb 12: 1
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One of the key figures not only of Catalan but of Spanish cinema, Pere Portabella began his career as a producer of such seminal works as Saura's Los Golfos and Bunuel's Viridiana. In the 60s he was one of the founders and guiding lights of the Barcelona School, contributing to a number of its main works. After over ten years of inactivity in the cinema, Portabella roared back, arriving at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival with Warsaw Bridge. The film sets in motion three different characters, whose stories cross, run parallel or at times completely veer away from one another. Continuing with the experimental narrative approach that had characterized his work with the Barcelona School, Portabella creates a kind of "city symphony" of Barcelona (complete with a symphony orchestra playing outdoors), moving us through a dizzying number of locations as his characters keep trying to adjust to their new surroundings.
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Wed Feb 8: 3
Sat Feb 11: 3:30
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"When critics and audiences were going ga-ga over the postmodern techniques of Scream, it was interesting that no one made note of Bigas Luna's Anguish, an immensely clever take on the genre made almost a decade before Craven's popular favorite... Bloody, scary, funny, and unsettling, Anguish is right up there with Mute Witness as the best fright flick that most people have never heard of." - Rod Armstrong, reel.com
One of Spanish cinema's resident malditos, Bigas Luna has fashioned a horror film that takes on the hardest subject of them all: why do people watch horror films? American actor Michael Lerner stars as a near-sighted mama's boy working for an ophthalmologist who is unexpectedly laid off. Goaded by his mother, he sets off take his revenge on a clear-sighted world - or is that that plot of the horror film we saw last week? Circling in and out of itself with grace and wit, Anguish has more than enough chills to delight fans of the genre while offering everybody else a reflection on why people like to be scared.
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Thurs Feb 9: 2
Thurs Feb 9: 9:30
Sun Feb 12: 7:30
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One of the great box-office hits last year across Spain, Tapas is the the debut feature of actor José Corbacho, who co-directed with his friend Juan Cruz. Five interlocking stories, stories with resonance in any large urban center, make up the narrative: young people wondering if their dead-end supermarket jobs are all the careers they'll ever have, a lonely, middle aged woman scared to follow up on some contacts she's made through the Internet, a retired couple carefully economizing their limited means. Yet at least once a day their stories and the many others that make up their neighborhood take time out for succulent little dishes - Spain's famous tapas - that come with some late afternoon refreshment. Gathering for tapas becomes much more than a time to eat, it's a time to reflect, to reassess, and especially to find out how everyone else is doing. Filmed largely in Barcelona's L'Hospitalet de Llobregat district, Tapas is a warm and often humorous portrait of a community and the rituals that not only sustain it but often taste quite good as well.
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Thurs Feb 9: 4
Fri Feb 10: 8:30
Mon Feb 13: 1
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Responsible for one of the most remarkable performances in the cultural festival that accompanied the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the Catalan group La Fura dels Baus is widely considered one of Europe's most cutting-edge theater companies. Having earlier adapted Goethe's Faust to a multimedia play and then an opera, here they re-imagine it as film. Noted cancer specialist Dr. Fausto (Miguel Angel Solà) sets off for a medical conference in a distant city; upon arrival he's picked up in a taxi by Santos (Eduard Fernandez), a former patient of Fausto's who claims that years before the good doctor saved his life - and now Santos would like to return the favor. Santos leads Fausto to a world existing in the shadow of the one we see and live in, a place where memory and fear compete for space with sensual reality. The extraordinary cinematography by Pedro del Rey bathes the images with rich curtains of color that give an instant theatrical feel to all its many locations. An auspicious entrance for a major theatrical company into the world of cinema.
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Fri Feb 10: 2
Fri Feb 10: 6:30
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One of the rare experimental filmmakers whose works often draw considerable audiences, José Luis Guerin here offers a delightful visual essay on the transformation of Barcelona's "Barrio Chino" - so named because it was near the docks from which ships would embark for the Far East. Long known for its dimly lit cabarets, colorful characters and narrow back alleys, the Barrio inevitably began to fall victim to the wave of "urban renewal" that swept Barcelona around the time of the 1992 Olympic Games. Weaving together sequences of the Barrio's inhabitants, the construction workers sent to tear it down, and visitors hoping to catch a last glimpse of history, as well as beautiful period footage that shows the Barrio Chino in its more notorious days, Guerin takes us on a journey to one of Spain's most legendary neighborhoods. Awarded the International Critics' Prize at the 2001 San Sebastian International Film Festival.
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Fri Feb 10: 4
Sat Feb 11: 1
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Ana - played by director Balletbò-Coll - works as a tour guide but is really a performance artist, trying to scrape together the funds to stage on a new monologue. One day an American engineer living in Barcelona, Montserrat, comes on her tour. Although claiming not to be interested sexually in women, Montserrat feels attracted to Ana, and the two begin to spend a lot of time together. For her part, Ana doesn't quite know what to make of her new friend, whose culture and background - American, Jewish, science, academia - couldn't be further from her own. Yet gradually a bond begins to grow between them. Balletbò-Coll, who studied filmmaking at Columbia, brings a wonderfully light touch to the story; the action is so easygoing and free-flowing, especially the scenes between the two women, that the film has an improvisatory feel. Winner of Audience Awards at both the San Francisco and Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Festivals.
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Sat Feb 11: 5:30
Tue Feb 14: 4:15
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A longtime New York resident, Jordi Torrent brings an American indie sensibility to this touching story largely set in a contemporary Barcelona rooming house. The residents include various nationalities of Europeans, Arabs, Africans and Asians, all living together in harmony, somewhat unsettled by the news that the place is about to be sold and then converted into more lucrative housing. Into the mix comes a South Asian woman (Sarita Choudhury) and her son; the woman seems to be in Barcelona on some kind of mission, but her fellow boarders at first can't figure out what it might be. The great strength of East of the Compass lies in its gentle depiction of a new, decidedly multiethnic, multicultural Barcelona, presenting this development not as a social issue but simply as a present-day reality.
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Sat Feb 11: 7:30
Tue Feb 14: 2:15
Tue Feb 14: 6:15
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One of the mainstays of the Barcelona School of the 60s, Joaquim Jordà later turned his talents to screenwriting before returning to direction in the 90s. Monkeys Like Becky shows his old subversive spirit still shines brightly. One of the oddest mixtures of reality and fiction recently seen, the film is based on the true story of the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese neurologist Egaz Moniz. In the early 30s, Moniz attended a conference in London in which an American biologist presented a docile, rather charming monkey named Becky; the biologist then showed a film in which Becky was shown to have been formerly a wild, savage beast. The transformation was said to be caused by an incision into the central lobe of Becky's brain. It dawns on Moniz that such a procedure might prove effective with schizophrenics, and thus the practice of mental lobotomies was born. Using both staged sequences and documentary footage, Jordà and Villazàn wryly capture the intersection of science, psychiatry and social control.
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Sun Feb 12: 5:30
Mon Feb 13: 3
Tue Feb 14: 8:15
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