El mundo que fue (y el que es) / The World That Was (and That Is) (Pablo Llorca, 2011)

Most of Llorca's films are available to view for free (without subtitles at the moment, but PLAT are due to launch an English site soon) here. I'm intending to write something about his films once I've watched a few more of them.

I've drifted off course a bit in the last week. I will return to El futuro, as previously indicated, but I've also finished the Pere Portabella boxset and am working out how to write about that collection of films.

Todas las mujeres (Mariano Barroso, 2013)

I've reviewed Todas las mujeres for the Spanish Film Review Club - you can find my post here.

BARATOmetrajes 2.0 (Daniel San Román and Hugo Serra, 2014) and cine low cost

    This timely (for me) documentary examines the phenomenon of 'nuevo cine low cost Español' / new low cost Spanish cinema, which has grown exponentially in the last couple of years. I'm going to take the opportunity of talking about the documentary to expand on the issue of 'cine low cost' as mentioned briefly in previous posts. Obviously there is an economic and social context to the increase in low cost cinema being made - austerity measures in Spain have seen reductions in government funding of cinema, and those kinds of schemes aren't always feasible for films made on the margins as some of them utilise expected audience numbers, which are not guaranteed or reliably predictable for independent cinema - but technological advances in recent years have also democratised production: more than one of the interviewees notes that you can make a film on your phone these days. However, technology alone is not enough to get a film made and seen.
    Interviewees in BARATOmetrajes 2.0 include directors, producers, distributors, festival programmers, and journalists, collectively taking the attitude that if you have an idea, a script, and friends who are willing to lend a hand, you can make a film - cinema is no longer the preserve of only the well-connected or the wealthy. However, there are evident tensions in relation to the idea of relying on friends - for example, producer Tina Olivares states that she would never embark on a film presuming that it was going to be low budget because that contains an assumption that she won't be able to pay people properly, something that she is unhappy about. Several of the directors interviewed were clearly uncomfortable about not being able to pay people (or themselves) properly for their work - this low cost cinema could still turn into the preserve of the rich if they're the only ones able to get by without a salary. 
    Funding in general is problematic - the films discussed were generally made for (low) five-figure sums but even that was hard won, often through appeals to friends and family, and increasingly via crowdfunding platforms (there is disagreement within the documentary as to the limits of crowdfunding in terms of how long it can remain viable as a funding source). The film explains the controversial system of 'subvenciones' (controversial in part because of how it's misunderstood - sometimes deliberately so when political point-scoring is going on - and the common misconception that the money goes into the filmmakers' pockets), and how it is loaded against smaller budget films, in a concise and clearly-illustrated manner. 
    Lack of money can have a knock-on effect on the aesthetic of a film, which may suit those who see these 'limitations' as adequate for the ideas they have and the speed at which they wish to work (several suggest that technical proficiency is overrated), but others evidently have aspirations for more ambitious productions. Relatedly, there is a discussion as to whether 'cine low cost' constitutes a genre, because there are certain recurrent characteristics (mainly dictated by the budget restrictions), chief among which is often what the film looks like - the films used as examples within the documentary looked quite different to each other stylistically, but others that I have seen online have a more generically lo-fi appearance. In terms of what I've read about cine low cost to date, it is generally spoken of as if it were a genre, which is part of the reason why it's separated out from the so-called 'other Spanish cinema' - although there are points of overlap insofar as both are termed 'independent' cinema (one interviewee asks "independent from what?") and usually low budget (although 'low' is always relative in financial terms). My project focusses on 'the other Spanish cinema' but I need to work out where the dividing line is and why films are put in one category or the other - are the 'other' films more ambitious or experimental? Or is it something else that differentiates them? Aesthetically the 'other' cinema encompasses a broad range of styles and methods of filmmaking - is this distinct from cine low cost? How do the two types/movements/phenomena connect with Spain's current social context?
     What I took from the documentary is that getting the film made is not actually the hardest part - getting it screened and seen by audiences is (another overlap between the two groups). Although technology has democratised production, the same is not true of distribution or exhibition. The Spanish market cannot cope with the volume of Spanish productions being made - for example, of the 107 Spanish films made in 2000, 3% never saw a commercial release; by 2007, with 172 Spanish productions, the proportion of unreleased films had risen to 14% (source: Yáñez 2008 and 2009 - I haven't managed to find more recent statistics on this specific aspect yet). Independent distributors are struggling in the current economic climate - Spain's biggest independent, Alta Films, a distributor and exhibitor of smaller / independent titles (whether American, European, or Spanish), shut its distribution arm last year and also had to close most of its cinemas. Meanwhile larger chains are also struggling due to the combination of the rise in IVA (which rose from 8% to 21% on entertainment in September 2012) and the cost of switching to digital (Spain is running behind many other European markets in that area), alongside people spending less on 'luxuries' - multiplexes are also closing down. In that environment, the bigger chains are less likely to take a chance on a smaller film that isn't a big draw for audiences. 
    In response, cinema is moving online - Márgenes, Filmin, and other VOD platforms are mentioned (I noticed that the littlesecretfilm initiative isn't included, which is a bit strange because it fits with the subject matter and they have been one of the most visible platforms for cine low cost, although I guess that their 'rules' set them apart), as is the possibility of filmmakers making their films pay-per-view through their own websites. El mundo es nuestro (Alfonso Sánchez, 2012) and Carmina o revienta (Paco León, 2012) are held up as (differing) examples of new and experimental distribution tactics that paid dividends, and the use of social media to generate publicity that they didn't have the funds to buy in the traditional sense.
     The issue of piracy, never far away in relation to Spanish cinema, also appears with members of the public offering the opinion that the Spanish won't pay for something that they can get for free. The low cost filmmakers admit to mixed feelings about their films being pirated because, while they would like to get paid, they would also like their films to be seen - the price of cinema tickets and DVDs (the former are broadly comparable with the UK, perhaps slightly more expensive, but the latter are noticeably more pricey in Spain) are seen as exorbitant in the current economic climate.
     BARATOmetrajes 2.0 is an interesting documentary that covers multiple aspects of the cine low cost phenomenon and includes a variety of opinions - quite often without an overall consensus, which serves to illustrate the diversity of people involved as well as the range of problems and possible solutions that they're encountering. Although it's not quite the topic I'm looking at, it's a good primer of what's going on alongside it, and is definitely worth watching if you have an interest in non-mainstream cinema. 

I watched it at Filmin, where it is showing for a few more days as part of the Atlántida Film Fest, but you can buy the DVD from the filmmakers' website - although note that it doesn't have subtitles.   

References:
Yáñez, J. (2008) - ' El cine español que no estrena', Cahiers du cinema España, January, no.8, pp.50-52.
Yáñez, J. (2009) - 'El cine español de 2007 que no llegó a las salas', Cahiers du cinema España, February, no.20, pp.52-53.

Bradford International Film Festival: The 'Other' Spanish Cinema

El futuro

    The 20th edition of the Bradford International Film Festival ran between the 27th March and 6th April 2014 at the National Media Museum with a diverse programme of films from around the world, including retrospectives of James Benning, Brian Cox, and Sally Potter, and Close-Up sections on producer/distributor Charles Urban, and the crime films of Yoshitarõ Nomura. I managed to catch a bit of (almost) everything but had timed my visit specifically to see the three Spanish films playing at the festival: Un ramo de cactus / A Bouquet of Cactus (Pablo Llorca, 2013), El futuro / The Future (Luis López Carrasco, 2013), and Costa da Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, 2013).  

   You can read the rest of my report on the 'other' Spanish cinema that screened in Bradford over at Mediático.

    I am intending to write about all three films here as well, probably starting with Luis López Carrasco's film (it's 67 minutes long, but I only scratched the surface in that report) at some point in the next couple of weeks.

Costa da Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, 2013)

Costa da Morte

At the end of last week I headed to the 20th edition of the Bradford International Film Festival for a few days, namely to see the three Spanish films that were screening - El futuro / The Future (Luis López Carrasco, 2013), Costa da Morte / Coast of Death (Lois Patiño, 2013), and Un ramo de cactus / A Bouquet of Cactus (Pablo Llorca, 2013) - although I saw quite a range of films while I was there.
A post about all three Spanish films will appear at Mediático next week but in the meantime I have reviewed my favourite, Costa da Morte, for Eye for Film.

True Love (Ion de Sosa, 2011)

Image taken from here

Available to view for free (legally) here. 

Uno de los dos no puede estar equivocado / One of the Two Can't Be Wrong (Pablo Llorca, 2007)

Available to view for free (legally) here.

Finisterrae (Sergio Caballero, 2010)

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 7: Los golfos / The Delinquents (1960)

In the reflection we see Julian (Manuel Zarzo) and Ramón (Luís Marín) eyeing up a potential victim

Director: Carlos Saura
Screenplay: Carlos Saura, Mario Camus, Daniel Sueiro
Cast: Luís Marín, Oscar Cruz, Manuel Zarzo, Juanjo Losada, Ramón Rubio, Rafael Vargas, María Mayer.
Synopsis: A gang of juvenile delinquents pool their resources to pay for one of their number to be put on the bill of a bull-fighting contest.

    So, almost seven months after my last post on the matter, the Carlos Saura Challenge restarts! And I've gone all the way back to the beginning to Saura's directorial debut.

    When I started the Challenge, in February last year, Los golfos had long been unavailable in any kind of home viewing / VOD format - in fact, I don't think there has ever been a Spanish DVD release of the film - so I kicked off the Challenge with his second film instead. But towards the end of the year, while perusing those 'Best Films/DVDs/Scenes of the Year'-type articles that proliferate in December, I discovered that a DVD of the film had been released in France in the summer (although only with French subtitles). The review bemoaned the quality of the print used for the DVD (as the stills in this post can attest) - and the Spanish Establishment's general lack of interest in film preservation or restoration (although producer Enrique Cerezo has taken matters into his own hands on that front) - but concluded by saying that to have the film available in any form is a good thing and in the circumstances would have to suffice. I tracked down a copy of the DVD (which features an interview with Pere Portabella, who produced the film, so my different projects briefly connect!) but didn't rush to watch it - watching a Spanish film with French subtitles is only marginally better than watching a French film with Spanish subtitles, and both give me a headache. Then I spotted that it was going to screen in Manchester as part of Viva, and I knew that I'd have to go and see it on the big screen (with English subtitles - the first film I've watched so far in this Challenge to have them!). You can read my review of the film for Eye for Film here. As I mention in there, the quality of the print was poor, but I'm glad I saw it in that format as it's likely that I'll be viewing the rest of his films on a variety of small screens.

    I don't want to replicate what I said in my review, so I'm just going to expand on a couple of points for this post. Like Llanto por un bandido, Los golfos suffered at the hands of the censors, although unlike the later film (which jumps so abruptly in the Buñuel-starring opening sequence that I thought the DVD had skipped) the excised footage appears to have been reinstated in the version that I saw. At the time, productions had to go through 'prior censorship', the submission of their script before they could start shooting, and because the censors were not production specialists they usually focussed on the narrative form. Saura's filmmaking to date had been in documentary, and he was not overly interested in questions of narrative, but Marvin D'Lugo suggests that the director's experience of going through four major rewrites for Los golfos gave him 'a deeper understanding of the ideological function of narrative as perceived in the censors' minds' (1991: 33). I think this put him in good stead later on where, as discussed in earlier posts, the narratives become more opaque and metaphorical - meaning that the censors had less to fixate on, or less that they could concretely point to for removal. But even here some of the editing choices lead to abrupt cuts that would seem to have been deliberate on Saura's part, to disrupt the 'normal' narrative form, rather than due to external tampering.

    The other aspect that I want to highlight is the stylishness of some of the robberies - there is a slickness to them that is difficult to connect to the other Saura films I've seen to date. That said, the robbery in a truck stop parking lot reminded me of certain sections of La caza - something to do with the lighting (that blazing sun that burns with a white heat almost comes through the screen) but also the combination of sharp timing and economic movement. Although Carlos Saura didn't work with Elías Querejeta and his 'house team', including acclaimed editor Pablo G. del Amo, until La caza, there is a kernel of something here that would blossom in that film - the perception I've come across in my reading is that Saura managed to create a masterpiece with La caza because he started working with Querejeta and Co. at that point, but the flashes of brilliance in Los golfos suggest that there was already something forming.

In front of frame, Chato (Juanjo Losada) waits to give the signal to those outside, while Julian (Manuel Zarzo) is on lookout in the rear of frame. The truck driver is sitting at the table behind Chato.

Chato is looking at the parking lot where Ramón (Luís Marín - in the foreground) relays the signal to Manolo (Rafael Vargas - standing between the trucks), who in turn gives the signal to...

Paco (Ramón Rubio) who proceeds to break into the truck. Saura rapidly cuts between close-ups of each of the men, ramping up the tension.

More Eye for Film reviews

Bertsolari

    I have been reviewing some of the films showing at ¡Viva! 20th Spanish and Latin American film festival at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester for Eye for Film. If you click on the titles, you will see my reviews of Los últimos días / The Last Days (Àlex Pastor and David Pastor, 2013) and Menú degustació / Tasting Menu (Roger Gual, 2013).
    I went to Manchester for the day on Sunday, to see two films - Carlos Saura's Los golfos / The Delinquents (1960) [yes, that does mean that the return of the Carlos Saura Challenge is imminent!] and Bertsolari (Asier Altuna, 2011), the latter of which is by far my favourite of the five films I've seen from the festival. A review of Los golfos will also appear on Eye for Film this week, but I will write a separate post for the blog so as to continue with the challenge.