My Favourite Spanish Films of 2014, Part One: Old, but new to me

I've watched a wider range of older Spanish films this year, so for that reason I'm dividing my 'favourites of 2014' choices into 'old' (anything before 2013) and 'new' (2013/2014 - which will appear later this week as Part Two). I've only listed films that I hadn't seen before this year, otherwise the likes of Muerte de un ciclista, El verdugo, and El día de la bestia would be included.

1. Poetes catalans / Catalan Poets (Pere Portabella, 1970)

I dutifully worked my way through Intermedio's boxset of Pere Portabella's complete works fully intending to write about the set as a whole but - as is so often the case - it simply took too long for me to finish the set. I should have started writing about them as I went along. With the exception of his two political documentaries - El sopar / The Dinner (1974) and the three-hour epic that is Informe general sobre algunas cuestiones de interés para una proyección pública (1976) - I preferred Portabella's short films over his feature-length ones. 

Poetes catalans is my favourite from the set overall, a thirty minute underground film of an illegal gathering - the First Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry (the speaking of Catalan in public was banned during the Franco dictatorship) in Barcelona 25th May 1970, in solidarity with political prisoners. Shooting in black and white Portabella frames the event almost like a boxing match, the raised stage resembling a boxing ring and the poets (Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere IV), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater) not pulling any punches in their attacks on the State and its forces. But it's the reaction of the crowd that makes it so electrifying - the cry of 'Libertad! Libertad!' [Liberty! Liberty!] (and later 'Amnestia!' [Amnesty!]) that sporadically breaks out in response to the poetry made my hair stand on end. Sadly it doesn't seem to be online anywhere and the films aren't for sale individually (although the boxset is fully subtitled).

2. Rocío (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1980)

a.k.a. The film I lost August to - I wrote a long essay (here) about the injustices that befell the documentary and its director after its release, but also tried to write about it as a cinematic text because although the censorship tends to be the main topic of discussion in relation to Rocío, it is a visually distinctive - and hauntingly beautiful - piece of filmmaking. I still can't really explain the strange spell the film cast over me. I may return to it at some point because I initially wanted to look at how the power relations / social hierarchies within the region it depicts are reflected in the editing, but that was too large a topic for the essay I had started writing (and I felt it would require more research than I had time for at that point). The censored version is available with English subtitles on YouTube (the excised sections are indicated by a black screen with a timer showing the duration), and the uncensored version is included with this book (as is a documentary about the legal battle) but without subtitles.

3. Mapa (Elías León Siminiani, 2012)

Winner of the European Documentary Award at the Seville Film Festival in 2012, León Siminiani's film is part travelogue, part diary, part confessional, and part embittered love letter. In the aftermath of the break-up of a long term relationship - swiftly followed by the loss of his job as a director of children's TV series - the director decided to return to his first love (cinema) and try to make a film as a way of fighting incipient depression. He decides to head to India in search of his film...but realises that instead of searching, he's actually fleeing something else. He returns to Madrid, but things don't get any easier there as he tries to work out what he is really looking for (and also finish the film). I often find diary films irritating but León Siminiani's dry humour and a good measure of self-awareness (his voiceover - as is explained within the film itself - was recorded months later, allowing him the benefit of hindsight as he assembled the film and caught sight of his fluctuating state of mind) mean that he avoids self-indulgence - what instead emerges is a sincere and introspective quest and an eventual realisation that you have to tell your own story (rather than somebody else's).

4. Tren de sombras / Train of Shadows (Jose Luis Guerin, 1997)

A magic trick, a sleight of hand made all the more potent due to my misreading an untranslated cue card (although the fact that it worked even with this misunderstanding is a testament to the quality of Guerin's game), and a playful dissection of film language and form. I wrote about it here.

5. Montaña en sombra / Mountain in Shadow (Lois Patiño, 2012)

This screened directly before Costa da Morte (which - it will come as no surprise - features in the  second instalment of this list) at the Bradford Film Festival but it merits its own entry. It starts out almost like an ink painting in motion, with the abstract shadows and contours eventually revealed as a snow-covered mountain complete with ant-like skiers making their way up and down. Fourteen minutes of spectral and ephemeral beauty.

6. Aita (José María de Orbe, 2010)

I'm jealous of anyone who got to see this in a cinema because I think its magic must reach full potential in the cavernous dark. An old uninhabited house reveals its layers and unexpectedly flickers into life at night with 'memories' of the region and its former owners playing out across its walls in the form of old films. Mystery and visual poetry in films can often feel like affectation - this feels organic and I found it genuinely enchanting. I wrote about it here.

7. Arrebato / Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1980)

I wrote about the film last month as my contribution to the Late Film blogathon. Cinema as bewitchment combines with the desire to lose oneself in Zulueta's tale of addiction and vampiric cameras. A strangely mesmerising and disturbing film.

8. Plácido (Luis García Berlanga, 1961)

Reviewed here. I've seen relatively few of Berlanga's films because not very many of them are available with subtitles and I struggle with the audio on older films. In this case, I had the luxury of seeing it subtitled and on the big screen at the Leeds Film Festival as part of the Berlanga and Bardem retrospective (I saw it in a double bill with Muerte de un ciclista). I overheard a couple sitting behind me saying that they found Plácido too loud ("too shouty") but the 'cacophonous rabble' aspect of Berlanga's ensembles is one of my favourite things about his films (characters frequently talk over the top of each other in increasingly anarchic scenes as more and more of them join in the inevitable disagreements). This also deeply and darkly funny - sharply skewering the false charity of the well-to-do in the face of genuine need.

9. Petit Indi (Marc Recha, 2009)

Reviewed here. I've found watching some of Recha's other films as akin to watching paint dry, so this one took me by surprise from the slinky soundtrack of its opening titles onwards. It has one of the most genuinely upsetting sequences (near the end of the film) I've seen this year and is all the more powerful for feeling truthful - for being true to the social circumstances in which its young protagonist (an excellent performance by Marc Soto) finds himself rather than offering the false comfort of a happy ending.

10. Finisterrae (Sergio Caballero, 2010)

I like the DIY aesthetic (at odds with Eduard Grau's painterly cinematography) of Caballero's bizarre film, which involves Russian-speaking ghosts who are clearly 'made' out of white sheets, a trusty horse that occasionally becomes a somewhat ropey animatronic model, and trees with pink ears that look like they've escaped from a Mr Potatohead. Also contains reindeer. Surreal, sometimes baffling, but consistently funny.

Honourable mentions (alphabetical): 

Bertsolari (Asier Altuna, 2011), Los golfos (Carlos Saura, 1960), Libertarias (Vicente Aranda, 1996), Umbracle (Pere Portabella, 1972), Uno de los dos no puede estar equivocado (Pablo Llorca, 2007).

UPDATE: 'My Favourite Spanish Films of 2014, Part Two: New' can be found here.

The Late Show: Arrebato / Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1980)

   Shadowplay's The Late Show: Late Movie Blogathon runs between 1st and 7th December - check out David Cairns's site to find links to other contributions. The aim is to focus on a film from late in a person's career - whether people go out on a high or not - but it doesn't have to be a recent film, or someone who has recently died. Learning from my mistake last year, I decided to find an interesting film as the starting point rather than the person whose 'late film' it is. So, having watched it for the first time earlier this year, my contribution (and my 200th post!) is on the influential underground classic Arrebato / Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1980) and the stories around it.

Will More and Iván Zulueta on the set of Arrebato

Update, August 2017: This post has been moved to my new blog, apart from the clip below (which I've been unable to transfer) - the post can now be found here.

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)

Sobre la marxa / The Creator of the Jungle (Jordi Morató, 2014)

My review of Sobre la marxa - as seen at the Leeds International Film Festival last weekend - is up over at Eye for Film, here. I'll return to the film on here when I start pulling together my thoughts on the various Spanish documentaries I've been watching in the last few months.

Luis García Berlanga (1921 - 2010) and Juan Antonio Bardem (1922 - 2002)

Luis García Berlanga front left and Juan Antonio Bardem centre, on the set of Esa pareja feliz. Picture taken from the Berlanga Film Museum website

"[Spanish cinema] is politically ineffectual, socially false, intellectually poverty-stricken, aesthetically-void and industrially stunted" - Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955

"Berlanga is not a Communist, he is something much worse: he is a bad Spaniard" - Francisco Franco, allegedly (quoted in Marsh 2006: 122)  

   The 28th Leeds International Film Festival is currently offering a joint retrospective of the two directors - who trained at film school together - concentrating on the early stages of their careers (effectively their key films made during the dictatorship) but also including a few films made by later generations of directors who can be said to have cinematic links to Berlanga and Bardem - Víctor Erice's El espíritu de la colmena (1973), Carlos Saura's Cría cuervos (1976), and Pedro Almodóvar's Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (1984).

   Although he co-scripted Bienvenido Mr Marshall!, arguably Bardem is somewhat shortchanged by the selection of films - the absence of Calle Mayor / Main Street (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1956) seems a glaring omission. Perhaps Berlanga's films from the period have better withstood the passing of time, their sharpness not dulled one iota (I say this having seen very few of Bardem's films). But Bardem's public criticisms of the cinema made in Spain - and his political commitment (which saw him jailed during the dictatorship - he was a member of the Communist party) - are addressed and / or echoed in the form and content of films made by Erice and Saura. The surprise is perhaps how much Berlanga and Bardem got past the censors - although their films were censored, they still seem pretty blunt in their criticisms of the regime and the Establishment - although maybe the metaphorical style of Erice and Saura (with which I'm more familiar) was a case of filmmakers learning from the postwar generation and cloaking their critique in a layer of opacity (although they still had their fair share of battles with State censorship). 

   Another connection across the years is Fernando Fernán Gómez, represented here as an actor in Berlanga and Bardem's joint directorial debut Esa pareja feliz (made in 1951 but not released until 1953) and El espíritu de la colmena, but he also worked with Saura (Ana y los lobos / Ana and the Wolves (1973), Mama cumplé 100 años / Mama Turns 100 (1979), and Los zancos / The Stiltwalkers (1984)) and Almodóvar (Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (1999)). He is little known beyond the Erice film in the UK, but he was a colossus of Spanish cinema (he died in 2007) with a long and varied career both in front of and behind the camera (he had 212 credits as an actor and 30 as a director (the majority of which were also written by him)) - should I ever finish the Carlos Saura Challenge (hahaha...), I wouldn't mind investigating the films he directed.

   Although his films satirise social issues and regularly skewer the Establishment (both during and after the dictatorship), Berlanga had a more complicated political background than Bardem - Berlanga's father was a Republican who was jailed after the Civil War, at which juncture the future director joined the División Azul (a volunteer regiment sent by Franco to fight alongside the Germans on the Russian Front during World War Two), but he would later officially become 'an enemy of the regime' after the gathering known as the Salamanca Conversations in 1955 (the occasion of Bardem's infamous statement at the top of this post).

   Almodóvar's films more obviously connect with those of Berlanga (although Bardem repeatedly returned to Almodóvar's favoured genre of melodrama) - while Berlanga's work often depicts a realistic social milieu, the humour taps in to Spanish traditions of costumbrismo (effectively a series of stereotypes relating to the rural and working classes, not to be taken as realistic, which took on an ironic edge from the 1950s) and esperpento (in which a distorted version of reality is utilised in order to critique it), which can also be discerned in some of the films by the man from La Mancha (and also those of the other Spanish director who has a retrospective at Leeds - Álex de la Iglesia (who I will write about next week)).

   Both Berlanga and Bardem had long careers - the former directed his last feature in 1999, the latter in 1998 - so there are plenty more of their films to explore if the retrospective piques your interest.

I will add links to the respective reviews of the films listed below as and when they go online.

• Esa pareja feliz / That Happy Couple (Luis García Berlanga & Juan Antonio Bardem, 1953)
• Bienvenido Mr Marshall! / Welcome Mr Marshall! (Luis García Berlanga, 1953)
• Muerte de un ciclista / Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)
• Plácido (Luis García Berlanga, 1961)
• El verdugo / The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1963)
• El espíritu de la colmena / The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)
• Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (Carlos Saura, 1976)
• Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? / What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Pedro Almodóvar, 1984)

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).

Visual XIV Cine Novísimo at Márgenes (1 - 10th November)

Cenizas (Carlos Balbuena, 2013)

Until 10th November, Márgenes is hosting 7 of the films from the official selection of the 14th edition of the festival VISUAL Cine Novísimo (which ran between 18th to 24th October). The festival has always focussed on newer talents, but since 2012 has concentrated on óperas primas (directorial debuts). This year two films shared the Best Film prize: Slimane (José A. Alayón, 2013) - which is among the films available at Márgenes - and Sobre la marxa / Creator of the Jungle (Jordi Morató, 2014), which I'll be seeing at the Leeds Film Festival in just over a week.
The seven films (which include fiction and documentary) available to view for free are:

• Cenizas (Carlos Balbuena, 2013)
• Gabor (Sebastián Alfie, 2013)
• Hotel Nueva Isla (Irene Gutiérrez, 2014)
• La casa de meu pere (Francina Verdés, 2014)
• Punto de partida (Sandra Rodríguez, 2013)
• Slimane (José A. Alayón, 2013)
• Temporal (Catxo, 2012)

The only one I've seen so far (just this evening) is Cenizas. Produced by Pere Portabella's 59Films, it is a starkly beautiful (the crisp black and white cinematography by Carlos Balbuena and Marta Ayuso is stunning) and almost wordless film, which follows a man as he returns to his home town (seemingly after a death in the family - the film opens with a funeral) and explores the surrounding landscapes. The gear shift about 8 minutes from the end didn't entirely work for me (although seeing Portabella's name in the credits contextualised it somewhat), but I'll be interested to see what Balbuena does next because he definitely has an eye for framing strong visual compositions.

Edificio España / The Building (Víctor Moreno, 2013)

This post has moved to my new blog - you can find it here.

Change of (twitter) address

You may have noticed that there has not been much activity on the @Spanishcineblog account lately - or that the sidebar on the left hand side now mentions two twitter accounts. I'm in the process of phasing out @Spanishcineblog and have deliberately not been tweeting much in the past month. I think twitter should be about interacting, and I don't interact that much through the blog's account anymore, for a variety of reasons but mainly because I am not logged in there often enough. I'm going to leave the account open for a while longer but will close it sooner or later.

The other account predates my starting Nobody Knows Anybody and it is the one I tweet from on a daily basis - it is my personal account, so it's not solely Spanish cinema-focussed (although I do tweet about Spanish cinema quite a lot). I won't be wholesale following all of the accounts that @Spanishcineblog does because that would unbalance my timeline but I am considerably chattier as @bookworm1979, so if you follow @Spanishcineblog or we've discussed films on there in the past, please feel free to say hi and I'll follow you back from there.

En tierra extraña / In a Foreign Land (Icíar Bollaín, 2014)

This post has been moved to my new blog - you can find it here.




Trailer IN A FOREIGN LAND by Iciar Bollain from Turanga Films on Vimeo.

Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival, 8th-12th October 2014

En tierra extraña / In a Foreign Land (Icíar Bollaín, 2014)

   Edinburgh kicked off its inaugural Spanish Film Festival today with the UK premiere of Icíar Bollaín's documentary - En tierra extraña / In a Foreign Land - about how Spain's financial crisis is forcing the younger generation to emigrate. The film is one of thirteen making up the varied programme - I have previously written about Una pistola en cada mano (recommended) and 15 años y un día (I've watched it so that you don't have to) - bringing a taste of Spain to Scotland.
   I will be heading to Edinburgh to watch En tierra extraña and Los ilusos / The Wishful Thinkers (the latter of which I had begun to think I would never manage to see), but also on show are the multi-award winning La herida / Wounded, the Ricardo Darín-starring (so you can't go wrong) Un cuento chino / Chinese Takeaway, and the pro-choice documentary Yo decido: el tren de la libertad / I Decide: The Train of Liberty (which if you can't get to Edinburgh, is actually available - complete with English subtitles - on Vimeo). The full list of films can be found on the festival's website.

UPDATE (15/10/14): I have written a review of En tierra extraña - which was great - for Eye for Film and once that is up I'll post an extended version of it on here. I'll also be writing something about the elusive Los ilusos for here - I had mixed feelings about it (it's maybe a bit too clever for its own good), but there is plenty going on and I'm glad that I finally got the chance to see it. The festival was by all accounts a great success, so I'm hoping that there will be future editions.

Ocho apellidos vascos / Spanish Affair (Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 2014)

Dani Rovira and Clara Lago

Spain's biggest-ever box office hit is another film screening in San Sebastián as part of the 'Made in Spain' section, and will also be in London next month. It is daft but a lot of fun.
My review is over at Eye for Film.

10th London Spanish Film Festival, 25th September - 5th October

Libertarias (1996), showing as part of the Vicente Aranda retrospective

Eye for Film have a short preview that I've written about the 10th edition of the London Spanish Film Festival, which starts next week. I'll be reviewing about ten nine of the films in total and will update this post with links as and when the reviews go online, rather than creating separate posts for each one. 

• Con la pata quebrada (Diego Galán, 2013)
• Stella cadente (Lluís Miñarro, 2014)
• Tots volem el millor per a ella (Mar Coll, 2013) [I have also reviewed the film for Take One - here]
• Las maestras de la República (Pilar Pérez Solano, 2013)
• El somni (Franc Aleu, 2014)
• Baratometrajes 2.0 (Daniel San Román and Hugo Serra, 2014) [my post from earlier this year on the longer version of the documentary is here]
• Libertarias (Vicente Aranda, 1996)
• Amantes (Vicente Aranda, 1991)
• Carmen (Vicente Aranda, 2003)

10,000 Km (David Marques-Marcet, 2014)

Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer

I have reviewed 10,000 Km (here) for Eye for Film. The film is showing at the San Sebastián Film Festival (19th-27th September) in the 'Made in Spain' section and will also screen at the London Film Festival next month. Earlier this week it made the shortlist of candidates (alongside Vivir es fácil con ojos cerrados (David Trueba, 2013) and El Niño (Daniel Monzón, 2014) - the latter of which will also be in London) to be Spain's entry for the 2015 Academy Awards. It's well worth catching if you get the opportunity.

Speaking Truth About Power: Documentary, Censorship, and Rocío

Rocío (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1980), a.k.a. the rabbit hole I fell down during August.
    It started with a book review. I was working my way through a backlog of film magazines, when a book review (by Antonio Santamarina) for El caso Rocío: La historia de una película secuestrada por la transición (edited by Ángel del Río Sánchez, Francisco Espinosa Maestre, and José Luis Tirado) caught my eye in the May edition of Caimán Cuadernos de Cine. 'A film hijacked by the Transition' piqued my interest, as did the fact that the film was a documentary (yes, that is what I'm supposed to be looking into at the moment) and that the book came with both a copy of the uncensored version of the film and a documentary, El caso Rocío (José Luis Tirado, 2013), about the making of Rocío and its subsequent legal troubles. And then I watched it. In fact, I think I've watched Rocío half a dozen times now, but I can't really explain why it has drawn me in as it has.
    I set myself challenges on here, or start projects, in an attempt to give myself a structure to write within. I'm someone who thinks through writing (anyone who has spoken to me immediately after a film viewing will know that I'm rarely coherent in my thoughts at that stage), but it's not often that I write due to a sense of compulsion - Rocío is, however, one of those instances. I wrote because the film was stuck in my head, because I couldn't find anything written about it in English (beyond a New York Times story about the trial), because in the emphasis placed on the censorship of the film people seem to have avoided writing about it as a film (which is a shame because it is an incredibly rich, and visually distinctive, piece of filmmaking), and because it tapped into the sheer enjoyment I get from properly delving into an unfamiliar film and working out how it 'functions'. I decided to focus on the two aspects that pulled me down the rabbit hole - the story of the injustice suffered by Fernando Ruiz Vergara and Rocío, and the visual components of the film itself.
    What I've written is over at Mediático.

Note: the censored version of the film is available on YouTube with English subtitles.

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.

Plan of Action: Documentaries and Blurred Borders

   It has been my intention in the last couple of months (I've kept getting waylaid by other things, as is my habit) to start imposing some kind of order on to my 2014 project ('El otro cine español'). The filmmakers who are being labelled with that tag are a disparate and unwieldy bunch - while I'm trying to work out who I would classify as belonging to this 'movement' (and how I will define 'it', and my own classifications) it seems sensible to divide them up into more manageable groups, even if I later draw the lines in different places.
    As I've previously said, I have some qualms with Caimán Cuaderno de Cine's criteria for their list. The actual articles they've published on the theme are more inclusive (so, even more filmmakers are mentioned, but that makes more sense to me - i.e. there is a thread that can be followed further back than CdC's arbitrary (to me) one year period). I've been reading my way through the articles and making translated notes (it would appear that the only way information will stick in my mind is in English), or in the case of Carlos Losilla's key article ('Un impulso colectivo', Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, September 2013, pp.6-8) I've written a full translation. As a side note, I'd like to say that the enthusiasm and excitement of the Spanish critics (in CdC but also websites such as Blogs&Docs) who have been writing about - and championing - these films (and particularly in what they've written about the newer group of filmmakers as being a group of people united by the conviction that you have to make images of the world and of ourselves with the aim of changing it and changing us (Losilla 2014: 22)) is compelling and infectious, and manages to even survive my broken up manner of translation (i.e. having to stop to look a word up in a dictionary when I'm not sure I've understood something properly). I've still got articles to work my way through, but I now have a better idea of the key themes or strands to what constitutes this 'other' cinema and also a view on which filmmakers I think need to be added to my considerations.
    I've come to the conclusion that documentaries are where I need to start - because of the number of documentaries being made by these filmmakers (and there are a lot of filmmakers who switch back and forth between making documentaries and making fiction films, which seems unusual to me because I can't think of many examples of this happening extensively elsewhere - Werner Herzog is one of the few names who springs to mind but please feel free to inform me of others), the manner in which documentaries more obviously fit with the apparent impetus and intentions of this 'movement' (I'm not 100% clear on this aspect at the moment, but that's my instinct), and also because it is some (but not all) of the more straightforwardly 'fictional' filmmakers (they make more or less exclusively fiction features - I'm not suggesting that they themselves are fictional, although that would make for an interesting digression) who I have more difficulty seeing quite how they fit into the larger collective. I've said 'straightforwardly' fictional because there are also a group of films that blur the borders between documentary and fiction - for example, in La plaga (Neus Ballús, 2013) the characters are local people playing fictionalised versions of themselves - and I'm going to include those films with the documentaries, at least in this initial period of research. So I need to do some reading on documentaries generally, but also look at documentary traditions within Spain as well.
    That almost inevitably means looking at filmmakers who date back to earlier periods but I don't want to get bogged down in the past too much, so I'm restricting myself to two antecedents for the time being - Joaquim Jordá (because he is frequently referred to in relation to this contemporary 'other' cinema) and Pere Portabella (because his films are clearly 'other', his filmography includes documentaries (some of them - particularly the political documentaries - key works in Spanish cinema), and I've recently watched all of them - rule no.4: always include something on your 'to do' list that you have already done, so that you can cross it off straight away). At this stage I'm not intending to write about either of them - I just want to watch as many of their films as I can get hold of, so that I have a better idea of connections Spanish critics might be seeing. It may be that as I read more, I come across more names or films that I'd like to see - but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that it's the people working now who I'm wanting to investigate and write about.
    Who makes the first cut? Again, I'm sure that more names will occur to me - or cross my radar - once I get going, but I think that Jose Luis Guerin (not on CdC's list) and Isaki Lacuesta (on CdC's list) both have to be on my list without question. The two of them move back and forth between documentary and fiction (or blur the borders in an individual film) and they've also got established careers, so there is a trail to be followed and they possibly act as a bridge between cinematic past and present (again, that's just my instinct at the moment). The other filmmakers I'm intending to look at initially are mainly people who are on CdC's list (with a few additional ones who have already crossed my path), most of whom have fairly short filmographies, but inclusion (or not) will partly depend on whether I can get hold of / view their films. It is about the films, after all. Documentaries actually seem to be easier to track down than some of the fiction films (another reason to start with them), so I do have access in some form or other to the majority of films in my initial selection (see the notes in the image above).
    That's where I'm starting - I don't know how frequently I will write about the films on here, but I will continue to at least give an indication of what I've been watching. I'm doing general reading at the moment and then I'm intending to spend some time just watching the films, before doing some more specific research. I'm taking notes when I view things already, so I may write them up in brief batches or something - but I'm not setting a schedule for including stuff on here, and in terms of my overall schedule for the project, I need a better idea of what I'm dealing with before I start setting myself deadlines. To be continued...

Wounded...but not dead yet: La pantalla herida and the state of Spanish cinema

    I've been researching Spanish cinema for more than a decade and in that time it has almost continuously been described (within Spain, at least) as being in 'crisis'. That's sometimes a relative term - the obsession with box office statistics and Spanish cinema's fluctuating share of their home market is often written about in negative terms (e.g. 'down 5% on last year') without giving context to put the figures in perspective. For example, there were so-called slumps in 1996, 2000, 2002 but all three followed years that had generated substantial increases in takings (Ansola González 2003: 49), something that was repeated between 2006 (a bumper year for Spanish cinema) and 2007 (in which only El orfanato made a serious dent in the Spanish box office). But since around 2009 events have taken on a darker hue and in the last couple of years a 'perfect storm' of not-so-perfect conditions (consumer habits have changed but a series of controversial measures by successive governments have also had a crippling effect) have combined to knock the Spanish film industry off its feet with little sign of a coordinated or sustained fightback.
    It's a positive sign that I've recently seen two Spanish documentaries that look specifically at the changes that Spanish cinema is undergoing - BARATOmetrajes 2.0 (which I wrote about here) and La pantalla herida / The Wounded Screen (Luís María Ferrández, 2014). Taken together they give the impression that something constructive might transpire because people are starting to listen as well as talk (those working in the industry, at least - in the past week, the Spanish government has shown itself happy to blend the vindictive with the economically stupid: reaction here, here, and here). Luís María Ferrández organised a series of discussions - in the spirit of the 1955 Conversations of Salamanca - with sets of people from different sections of the film industry (a full list of participants is below) and filmed the resulting conversations about finance, production, distribution, and exhibition.
    All of the participants agree that Spanish cinema is in dire straits, and that this state of being has been allowed to continue for too long - either by being ignored or simply not being dealt with effectively - but beyond that initial point of agreement, the film expands into diverse discussions as to the causes of the malaise and what possible solutions might be. This diversity is where it gets really interesting because while there is a general sense of frustration or exasperation (in relation to certain issues, not least 'subvenciones', people are fed up with having to explain themselves and / or justify their livelihoods) - and at times a sad air of defeat - there is also anger and the sparks of people being willing to fight. So, where to begin?
    Education is mentioned several times in the context of cinema not being valued - one illustration given is that Spanish politicians are photographed at football matches and tennis games in the pursuit of votes, but you won't see them at the opera or cinema - and that to change that attitude some kind of audiovisual appreciation needs to filter into the school curriculum. 'Culture' is the operative word here; culture is more than entertainment, it is part of our identities, enriching lives, and it is also the manner in which a country exists in the outside world (through the images it generates). In the Spanish context, it's partly about countering the attitude of rejecting one's own culture - Spain does not have the reputation of respecting its own artists - and the proportion of the Spanish public who won't view a Spanish film simply because it is Spanish. The stereotype is that "Spanish cinema is the Civil War seen from the point of view of the Republicans" (statistics on how few Civil War films are made in Spain are repeated several times in the course of the film with great testiness). Politics rears its head at this point - is Spanish cinema too politicised? 
    There are proponents of the 'shut up and sing' attitude towards politically-inclined actors in the mix but I've never seen why artists should hide their political opinions - especially if they have the opportunity to give voice to sections of the community that are not being listened to (if the Spanish government feels publicly humiliated by the vocal criticism of its domestic and / or foreign policies that often occurs at the Goya Awards, they can rest assured that the right-wing press goes after the people in question with vehement intent the following day). Imanol Uribe shares the anecdote of a taxi driver who told him that by making their politics clear, those in Spanish cinema automatically set themselves up to be rejected by 50% of the population. I don't think it's that straightforward - I don't think the rejection of your home culture is (party) political - because although those Spanish films that are big box office hits (I'm thinking of the Torrente films or the likes of El orfanato, or most recently Ocho apellidos vascos) tend to be 'genre films' (for want of a better phrase - all films belong to one genre or other) with little in the way of overt politics, if the public were making their filmgoing choices on party-political lines then surely those few Spanish filmmakers at the other end of the political spectrum would have a better showing at the box office (on the basis that the Left are spoilt for choice, which would presumably split their audience, but the Right have little to choose from)? Did I miss Holmes & Watson: Madrid Days (2012) setting the Spanish box office alight?
    What does come across is a sense of frustration that - as an industry - they are not very good at countering misrepresentations that circulate in the press or society more generally. The discussions get most heated with the topic of subventions because it is here that there seems to be the greatest discrepancy between representation and reality. As many of them point out - a) it's a line of credit that has to be repaid, not simply a handout, b) numerous other industries, such as car manufacture and (bizarrely) the Catholic Church, receive far bigger subsidies than cinema, c) the money is reinvested in the local economy and generates jobs, d) all countries support their cinema (this goes back to the point of culture being more than entertainment). In the current economic climate, particularly in austerity-ridden Spain, public money being invested in cinema is not popular - but is that partly because of how it is represented (feckless Lefties running amok on taxpayers' money)? As producer Sandra Hermida urges, should they not be taking out full page ads in national newspapers proclaiming their achievements, the number of jobs created, and money invested locally? They generally need to be more proactive in countering misinformation. 
    Although the press is criticised for not supporting Spanish cinema, to the detriment of sustaining a connection with the Spanish public, I don't know that Spain is that different to other European countries (with the possible exception of France - which is held up a paragon of cinematic virtue more than once). Maybe my view is skewed because I mainly read the specialist press and perhaps the wider Spanish press give it little attention. But, for instance, how often does Empire put a British film on its cover? Sight & Sound probably has British covers (and coverage) more frequently (or focuses on British filmmakers, if not British films) but the mainstream likes of Empire and Total Film rarely put homegrown talent on the front cover and they're unlikely to get a multipage spread inside either. In contrast, in 2013 Fotogramas had 5 Spanish covers (which is unprecedented in the 9 years I've had a subscription), Cinemanía had 2 (which is 2 more than 2012), and at the more erudite end of the market Caimán Cuadernos de Cine had Spanish films on their cover 3 times and extensive coverage of what they're championing as 'el otro cine español' - so the specialist press in Spain is reacting to the free-fall being experienced by the Spanish film industry and attempting to actively promote the films it produces. Admittedly I don't know what their circulation figures are like, but it just seems a little simplistic to say that the Spanish press don't do enough to support Spanish cinema (although I would argue that in terms of the general press, and their attitudes towards the film industry, this probably is an area where politics come into play - as a group, and as individuals, 'los del cine' are attacked with regularity in the right-wing press).
    It's obviously difficult to change the structure of an industry, but most of the participants think that change is necessary - especially in terms of how money is distributed - and that even the most romantic ideal of the cinema needs to have an industry supporting it. Ángeles González Sinde and Agustín Díaz Yanes propose that the committees that distribute the money need to have people with experience of filmmaking and a better eye for talent, pointing out that the first films by Álex de la Iglesia and Alejandro Amenábar were produced by established directors (Pedro Almodóvar and José Luis Cuerda respectively) who recognised nascent talent and took steps to nurture it. The French system, wherein a percentage of the price of all cinema tickets feeds back into the French film industry, is held up as a possible model, and the price of tickets is generally seen as something that needs to be looked at more closely. On the one hand, tickets prices are seen as expensive (although as Rubén Ochandiano points out, people will spend more money buying a gin and tonic in a bar), but on the other nothing in life is free (piracy is also touched upon, with director Miguel Santesmases pointing to research that concluded that those who pirate the most are also those who are most willing to buy when given the opportunity - so accessibility is also an issue (BARATOmetrajes looks at that issue in a bit more detail)). Multiple contributors argue that the subventions should be aimed at the ticket prices rather than production costs, to encourage people back into cinemas, with producer Luis Manso suggesting that tickets prices for Spanish films could be cheaper than for US productions - not because their films aren't as good, but as a way of encouraging the Spanish public to see them (he also notes that it is impossible for Spanish productions to compete with Hollywood in terms of promotion or the number of copies of a film distributed). 
    One of the questions Luís María Ferrández asks is whether people can continue to make a living making cinema in Spain. The arts are a field with a strong vocational aspect and producer Pilar Robla counsels that each individual has to have a conversation with themselves about what working conditions they will accept, but the consensus seems to be that fewer and fewer people can 'live' on making films - and certainly there is not enough work to support the number of graduates coming out of various kinds of film schools. 'Cine low cost' is discussed in this context, as although the democratisation of technology has enabled filmmakers to make films without help from 'normal' sources, the participants here say that it's not a set-up that will allow them to continue making films and nobody earns (or is properly protected) on those productions (again, BARATOmetrajes contains some different points of view on this aspect). Producer/director Luís Miñarro argues that although crowdfunding can achieve specific things, it is not the basis of an industry. Likewise, talk of cooperatives - although useful in difficult circumstances - also highlights that you can't make a living long-term in those situations.
    If all of this sounds slightly depressing - and as I've already said, there is an air of sadness to the film - the vocational element of artistic endeavour is where hope remains. Too many people can't imagine a life without culture, without cinema: while people still have passion for film, cinema will survive. What this documentary suggests though is that cinema will have to utilise its capacity for innovation and creativity in order to adapt to the changing circumstances it finds itself in, and that there need to be more conversations and more communication within (and outside) the Spanish film industry if it is going to get back on its feet.
    Despite this turning into something of an essay, I've barely summarised what's discussed in La pantalla herida and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in contemporary Spanish film. It's available to rent on Vimeo (here) - there are no English subtitles, but if you have any Spanish at all, have a go (I'm by no means fluent but I found most of it easy to follow - it helps if you have an awareness of the issues under discussion).



The participants: José Luis Acosta (president of SGAE, writer and director), Belén Bernuy (producer), Marisa Castelo (intellectual property lawyer), Fernando Cayo (actor), Raúl Cerezo (president of the Academy of Spanish Short Films), Jesús Ciordia (actors' agent), Eduardo Chapero Jackson (director), Agustín Díaz Yanes (writer and director), Karra Elejalde (actor), Javier Elorrieta (producer and director), Valentín Fernández Tobau (writer and president of abcguionistas), Gustavo Ferrada (producer), Gil Parrondo (art director), Enrique González Macho (president of the Academy of Cinema), Ángeles González Sinde (ex-Minister of Culture, ex-president of the Academy of Cinema, director and writer), Fernando Guillén Cuervo (actor, producer, and director), Sandra Hermida (producer), Antonio Hernández (director), Carlos Jiménez (director of the Museo del Cine in Madrid), Julia Juániz (editor), Juan Ramón Gómez Fabra (president of the distributors of Spain), Enrique López Lavigne (producer), Joaquín Manchado (camera operator and DoP), Luis Manso (producer), Fele Martínez (actor), Luis Miñarro (producer and director), Pepe Nieto (composer), Rubén Ochandiano (actor), Lourdes de Orduña (costume), Pedro Pérez (ex-president of FAPAE - federación de productores audiovisuales), Félix Piñuela (director of Versión española, TVE), Paco Ramos (producer), Diego Rodríguez (president of the platform of festivals of the community of Madrid), Pilar Robla (producer and president of APPA (Asociación profesionales producción audiovisual)), Gerardo Sánchez (director of Días de cine, TVE), Miguel Santesmases (director), Susana de la Sierra (Director General of the ICAA (Ministry of Culture)), Hugo Silva (actor), Imanol Uribe (director), Manolo Velasco (camera operator and DoP), Nacho Vigalondo (director), Luis Zahera (actor).

Stella cadente / Falling Star (Lluís Miñarro, 2014)

My Eye for Film review of Lluís Miñarro's Stella cadente (2014) can be found here.

This was the only Spanish film I managed to see while I was at the Edinburgh film festival this past weekend but, if you are in the vicinity of Edinburgh this week, I'd recommend My Name Is Salt (Farida Pacha, 2013) (my review for EFF is here), Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang, 2013), and Garnet's Gold (Ed Perkins, 2014).
Stella cadente is one of those films that has so much going on that connections slowly become apparent as it percolates through your mind later, so I do have more to say beyond my review - I'll come back to it on here soon.

Mercado de futuros / Futures Market (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011)

I had a weekend of watching Spanish documentaries including La pantalla herida / The Wounded Screen (Luís María Ferrández, 2014), which discusses the current sorry state of the Spanish film industry - I'm intending to write something about that one in the next week or so, but it may have to wait until I get back from a few days at the Edinburgh international film festival (which starts this week).

Blow Horn (Lluís Miñarro, 2010)

Available to view online with English subtitles here. 

Subtle Gestures and Tonsorial Distractions: Javier Bardem as a Travelling Performer

The Dancer Upstairs

That Javier Bardem idea I've been muttering about for more than a year has finally come to fruition (although, as is often the way, not quite in the form that I'd originally envisaged). The Cine-Files sent out a performance-related call for papers last November and my submission was accepted. You can now read 'Subtle Gestures and Tonsorial Distractions: Javier Bardem as a Travelling Performer' - in which I discuss Bardem's performances in Los lunes al sol, Mar adentro, Before Night Falls, The Dancer Upstairs, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and No Country for Old Men - over at The Cine-Files. There are a host of other acting-related pieces on the site as well.

Lost Classic: Entre tinieblas / Dark Habits (Pedro Almodóvar, 1983)

I've written about Almodóvar's Entre tinieblas / Dark Habits for The Big Picture Magazine as part of their 'Lost Classics' series - you can read it here.

La leyenda del tiempo (Isaki Lacuesta, 2006)

My viewing habits are a bit skewed at the moment because my Filmin subscription is about to expire and I won't be renewing it in the immediate future - so I'm trying to watch the films they have that are difficult to get hold of on DVD (or that aren't currently available on DVD).

London Spanish Film Festival Spring Weekend

Image taken from the LSFF mailer

The London Spanish Film Festival's 4th Spring Weekend started yesterday. You can see an overview that I wrote over at Eye for Film, and I've also written reviews of 15 años y un día / 15 Years and One Day (Gracia Querejeta, 2013) [I'm slightly mystified by the awards attention it has received in Spain], Petit Indi / Little Indi (Marc Recha, 2009) [showing as part of a Sergi López retrospective, and my favourite of the films that are screening], and Todas las mujeres / All the Women (Mariano Barroso, 2013).

Petit Indi / Little Indi (Marc Recha, 2009)

Cravan vs. Cravan (Isaki Lacuesta, 2002)

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.