Esto no es un juego: The serious mayhem of Álex de la Iglesia

A devilish communication in El día de la bestia

   The Leeds International Film Festival 2014 has two Spanish cinema retrospectives. The first to get underway was the Berlanga and Bardem one, but this past weekend the Álex de la Iglesia retrospective began with El día de la bestia (my favourite of his films) screening to coincide with the Fanomenon Day of the Dead 8.
   Apart from El día de la bestia (1995), the retrospective is skewed towards de la Iglesia's more recent films. It's a shame that La comunidad / Common Wealth (2000) wasn't included, not least because it features Carmen Maura on top form, but the four films together capture various facets of the director's career. I have something of a mixed relationship with his films - I enjoy the dark humour, excessive mayhem, and cinematic brio, but find many of the representations of women problematic. Balada triste de trompeta is a case in point and the film manages to be both hypnotic and deeply unsettling at the same time. I think it's his most interesting film so far - if you've got the stomach for it (it's probably also his most violent film, which is saying something), it's well worth catching. I'm reviewing all four films for Take One (with an additional review of El día de la bestia for Eye for Film) and will add the links below as and when the reviews appear online.

• El día de la bestia / The Day of the Beast (1995)
• Crimen Ferpecto / Ferpect Crime (2004)
• Balada triste de trompeta / The Last Circus (2010)
• Las brujas de Zugarramurdi / Witching and Bitching (2013)

Preview: Spanish cinema at the 28th Leeds International Film Festival

El verdugo / The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1964)

   The 28th Leeds International Film Festival begins this week, running between 5th - 20th November, and an unusually high number of Spanish films are screening there.
   As I mentioned in my previous post, Sobre la marxa / The Creator of the Jungle (Jordi Morató, 2014) will be showing, but there are also two Spanish retrospectives: one combining the early films of Luis García Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem with a few of their cinematic descendants (with films by Víctor Erice, Carlos Saura, and Pedro Almodóvar), and the other featuring the mayhem of Álex de la Iglesia (playing as part of the Fanomenon strand). Full details of screening times for all of the Spanish films can be found here.
   I'll be reviewing the Spanish films - and others - for Eye for Film and Take One. My intention is to put up a post here for each of the two retrospectives with a brief overview and collate the links to the relevant reviews. Sobre la marxa will get its own post because it fits with my current documentary focus, and the screening of Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens means that the Carlos Saura Challenge will restart (as I'll be reviewing the film as well, that extended post may not appear until the week after the festival).

Ficció / Fiction (Cesc Gay, 2006)

Cesc Gay's Ficció is one of my favourite films (in any language), but I've never written about it on here because I haven't rewatched it in the time the blog has been running. However, it is showing as part of the Camera Catalonia strand at the forthcoming Cambridge Film Festival (28th August - 7th September), and I've reviewed it (here) for Take One as part of their coverage of the festival.