Pere Portabella

A multi-part feature on the governing body of Spain, the Popular Party under Jose María Aznar. Themes include the bombing of Iraq, immigration, U.S. fire in Baghdad, and the manipulation of the media.

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a one-woman stage reading of a Joan Brossa play

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Naked bodies are buffeted by water accompanied by the music Il Temporale from the opera La Cenerentola and the overture to Il Barbiere di Siviglia both by Gioacchino Rossini.

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13-episode adaptation of the short story collection by Pere Calders.

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An itinerary through the great creations of Catalan art: Romanesque, Gothic, Modernist and Contemporary; with interviews to Catalan creators such as architect Ricardo Bofill, poet Pere Gimferrer, sculptor Susana Solano, and painter Antoni Tàpies.

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A female professor, a writer, and an orchestra conductor--three characters, two couples--attend a grand literary cocktail party. The writer has just won the prize for his book "Warsaw Bridge." The winner answers the journalist's questions one after another, but he is unable to come up with a synthesis of the plot of his book. They will simply have to read it.

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How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.

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Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974 on the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison.

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Commissioned by the Maeght Gallery with the exhibition of Joan Miró, organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs at the Grand Palais, which opened on May 17, 1974 in Paris. This film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (at the Miró) and Tarragona during the implementation process, by Josep Royo, a tapestry by Joan Miró. Five people worked for eight months in the realization of this tapestry, using wool 1200kg and 600kg for the warp. The total weight of 3500kg and a half was six meters wide by 11 meters long. They need a purpose built weaving loom. The day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the tapestry was placed in the lobby of one of the towers when they were demolished.

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The film was conmissioned by the Galeria Maeght to commemorate the Joan Miró exhibit organized by the French Minsitry of Cultural Affairs in the Grand Palais in Paris that opened on May 17, 1974. The film, that took five days to shoot, shows the smelting and casting process of the work known as Puertas Mallorquinas by Joan Miró. The filming team travelled to the foundry owned by the Parellada family in Llinars de Munt.

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The film is divided into two antithetical segments ‒ The first is made up of a couple of fixed shots of the pianist, Carles Santos, playing Chopin's Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op.45. The second segment shows him listening to this own recording from a loudspeaker until he dons the headphones, therefore letting silence take over the film and consequently also over the audience in the movie theatre. The lenght of the silent shot is for the duration of the prelude.

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An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

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This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with dejá vu scenes that promise us more but remain tensely unfinished. Jonathan Rosembaun said: “few directors since Resnais have played so ruthlessly with the unconscious narrative expectations to bug us”. Learning from the feeling of strangeness caused by Rossellini as he threw well known actors into savage scenery in southern Europe. Portabella makes Christopher Lee wander around a dream-like Barcelona. Without a doubt Portabella’s most structurally complex and most profoundly political film, that is ferociously poetic.

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At underground film of the 1st Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry filmed in the Proce Theater in Barcelona on May 25, 1970, in solidarity with political prisoners. The participating poets were: Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere IV), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater.

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Short film by Spanish/Catalan film maker Pere Portabella.

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Portabella’s first feature, co-scripted by poet Joan Brossa, became one of the most influential works of the Barcelona avant-garde, although like all his early films, it circulated only in an underground fashion. Eschewing dialogue, the director constructs a non-narrative story in fragments that reveal the daily lives of an adulterous couple interspersed with a cryptic stream of unrelated imagery. The title of this homage to directors including Eisenstein, Antonioni, Bergman, and Buñuel refers to the 29 “black years” of the Franco dictatorship. — chicago.cervantes.es

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With musical accompaniment from the zarzuela 'The drum Grenadiers' by Ruperto Chapí, a pair of custodians are in the basement of the National Library of Madrid showing some canvas awarded with the National Prize for Painting between 1941 and 1969.

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As publicity for the exhibit Miró L’altre, organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya in 1969, the Board commissioned Pere Portabella to film Miró painting the “poster” for the exhibit on the ground floor windows of the building. Portabella was not interested in simply filming a testimonial documentary. However, he said he would do the film if after the exhibit Joan Miró himself, with the help of the cleaning staff erased his own painting. Joan Miró accepted the idea without a doubt. The complicity between the film maker and the painter is evident in the filming.

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The Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya commissioned Pere Portabella to make this film for the Joan Miró retrospective exhibit in 1969. There were heated discussions on whether it would be prudent to screen the film during the exhibit. Portabella took the following stance: "either both films are screened or they don't screen any" and, finally, both Miro l'Altre and Aidez l'Espagne were shown. The film was made by combining newsreels and film material from the Spanish Civil War with prints by Miró from the series "Barcelona" (1939-1944). The film ends with the painter's "pochoir" known as Aidez l'Espagne.

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Pere Portabella’s first work as a director starts with the following phrase: “defeated…but not conquered”. This may or should be taken as an allusion to the technical K.O. taken by Portabella from Franco’s regime during the sixties as regards his work as a producer. Through the extremely raging playthings of the words of Catalan poet Joan Brossa, Portabella attempts to dismantle the forms of advertising discourse of that time.

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Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre.

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A Pepe Carvalho adventure.

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How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.

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David is a physician who returns to Spain 30 years after his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Now a member of a medical convention, he looks up old friends and finds his former lover, now a married woman with a flamenco-dancing daughter. He and the daughter have an immediate and mutual attraction to each other. He considers running away with the exotic beauty before asking his wife to join him for an extended vacation after the convention .

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Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.

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While waiting to get started on the production of his feature Liberxina 90 (1970), Carlos Duran shot this short (with very expressive support by several Escuela de Barcelona professors): a grimly colourful satire on modern society as such, and on its fascist Spanish variety in particular. "The intrusion into the private life of a human being, of the distinct tendencies that exist in the society we live in, until they fall into chaos." Carlos Durán

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A beautiful, sometimes faintly bonkers celebration and contemplation of the role Bach’s music plays in the world today. Blending historical reconstruction with very loosely linked ‘dramatic’ scenes and documentary sequences, the film constitutes a playful, painterly sequence of variations on the argument that Johann Sebastian changed the way the world hears thanks to his extraordinary ear for harmony.

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Carles Santos plays several of his pieces on the piano. This film was made for the exhibit on Carles Santos Visca el piano! held at the Miro Foundation in the summer of 2006.

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Naked bodies are buffeted by water accompanied by the music Il Temporale from the opera La Cenerentola and the overture to Il Barbiere di Siviglia both by Gioacchino Rossini.

Open details →

Experimental silent homage to the origins of cinema, recreating the apparent disappearance of a French photographer in the 1920s.

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13-episode adaptation of the short story collection by Pere Calders.

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An itinerary through the great creations of Catalan art: Romanesque, Gothic, Modernist and Contemporary; with interviews to Catalan creators such as architect Ricardo Bofill, poet Pere Gimferrer, sculptor Susana Solano, and painter Antoni Tàpies.

Open details →

A female professor, a writer, and an orchestra conductor--three characters, two couples--attend a grand literary cocktail party. The writer has just won the prize for his book "Warsaw Bridge." The winner answers the journalist's questions one after another, but he is unable to come up with a synthesis of the plot of his book. They will simply have to read it.

Open details →

How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.

Open details →

Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974 on the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison.

Open details →

Commissioned by the Maeght Gallery with the exhibition of Joan Miró, organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs at the Grand Palais, which opened on May 17, 1974 in Paris. This film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (at the Miró) and Tarragona during the implementation process, by Josep Royo, a tapestry by Joan Miró. Five people worked for eight months in the realization of this tapestry, using wool 1200kg and 600kg for the warp. The total weight of 3500kg and a half was six meters wide by 11 meters long. They need a purpose built weaving loom. The day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the tapestry was placed in the lobby of one of the towers when they were demolished.

Open details →

The film was conmissioned by the Galeria Maeght to commemorate the Joan Miró exhibit organized by the French Minsitry of Cultural Affairs in the Grand Palais in Paris that opened on May 17, 1974. The film, that took five days to shoot, shows the smelting and casting process of the work known as Puertas Mallorquinas by Joan Miró. The filming team travelled to the foundry owned by the Parellada family in Llinars de Munt.

Open details →

The film is divided into two antithetical segments ‒ The first is made up of a couple of fixed shots of the pianist, Carles Santos, playing Chopin's Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op.45. The second segment shows him listening to this own recording from a loudspeaker until he dons the headphones, therefore letting silence take over the film and consequently also over the audience in the movie theatre. The lenght of the silent shot is for the duration of the prelude.

Open details →

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Open details →

This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with dejá vu scenes that promise us more but remain tensely unfinished. Jonathan Rosembaun said: “few directors since Resnais have played so ruthlessly with the unconscious narrative expectations to bug us”. Learning from the feeling of strangeness caused by Rossellini as he threw well known actors into savage scenery in southern Europe. Portabella makes Christopher Lee wander around a dream-like Barcelona. Without a doubt Portabella’s most structurally complex and most profoundly political film, that is ferociously poetic.

Open details →

Short film by Spanish/Catalan film maker Pere Portabella.

Open details →

Portabella’s first feature, co-scripted by poet Joan Brossa, became one of the most influential works of the Barcelona avant-garde, although like all his early films, it circulated only in an underground fashion. Eschewing dialogue, the director constructs a non-narrative story in fragments that reveal the daily lives of an adulterous couple interspersed with a cryptic stream of unrelated imagery. The title of this homage to directors including Eisenstein, Antonioni, Bergman, and Buñuel refers to the 29 “black years” of the Franco dictatorship. — chicago.cervantes.es

Open details →

With musical accompaniment from the zarzuela 'The drum Grenadiers' by Ruperto Chapí, a pair of custodians are in the basement of the National Library of Madrid showing some canvas awarded with the National Prize for Painting between 1941 and 1969.

Open details →

As publicity for the exhibit Miró L’altre, organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya in 1969, the Board commissioned Pere Portabella to film Miró painting the “poster” for the exhibit on the ground floor windows of the building. Portabella was not interested in simply filming a testimonial documentary. However, he said he would do the film if after the exhibit Joan Miró himself, with the help of the cleaning staff erased his own painting. Joan Miró accepted the idea without a doubt. The complicity between the film maker and the painter is evident in the filming.

Open details →

The Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya commissioned Pere Portabella to make this film for the Joan Miró retrospective exhibit in 1969. There were heated discussions on whether it would be prudent to screen the film during the exhibit. Portabella took the following stance: "either both films are screened or they don't screen any" and, finally, both Miro l'Altre and Aidez l'Espagne were shown. The film was made by combining newsreels and film material from the Spanish Civil War with prints by Miró from the series "Barcelona" (1939-1944). The film ends with the painter's "pochoir" known as Aidez l'Espagne.

Open details →

Pere Portabella’s first work as a director starts with the following phrase: “defeated…but not conquered”. This may or should be taken as an allusion to the technical K.O. taken by Portabella from Franco’s regime during the sixties as regards his work as a producer. Through the extremely raging playthings of the words of Catalan poet Joan Brossa, Portabella attempts to dismantle the forms of advertising discourse of that time.

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Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.

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Don Anselmo, a retired old man, decides to buy a motorized disabled stroller since all his pensioner friends own one. His family strongly refuses him to purchase the vehicle, so don Anselmo decides to take extreme measures to achieve his goal…

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A group of friends who are struggling to survive in the slums of Madrid commit petty crime in order to finance the debut as a bullfighter of one of them.

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