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An error has ocurred. Please try again[* I'm wondering whether I should create a dialogue-density index, dividing the total runtime by the number of subtitle lines....]
Reviews
Límites: 1ª persona (2009)
love, lies and cinephilia
A brilliant case of terminal movie-making here (see Schenker's article 'On the Terminal in Cinema' in Senses of Cinema nr 47). This adooooorable short film manages to carry you in suspension of disbelief through a story with a double retelling while it simultaneously makes you painfully aware of the (amateurish) conditions of its production. Chapeau!
Synopsis with spoilers ahead
Story one is I filmed her because I loved her. Story two is I filmed her because I kept forgetting to care for her. Story three is wow, I love this camera, look how much fun it is to edit and re edit and dub and slow-motion this footage of my... unbearably painful heartbreak.
Un instante en la vida ajena (2003)
her glamorous home movies
Follow this rich girl from the first home movies she made in the 1920s through to her safaris and cross-continental travels in the 1970s. Born in Barcelona to a very wealthy family in the pharmaceutical business, she proved to be more adventurous than most girls of her class at the time. I spent most of the film expecting something special to happen, and in that sense it was a disappointment. Compared, for instance, with the eight stories compiled by Jan Sikl in Private Century (2006), 'Un instante' lacks a final, touching, personal anecdote that could bring its self-filmed character closer to the viewer. Neither do we get the pleasure of a carefully written narration about the historical context that is so delightful about Peter Forgac's El perro negro (2005). Instead, this film merely surprises us by showing us the cosmopolitan life of a bourgeois but creatively talented woman, very atypical to Spanish film culture. Madronita is a refreshing break from the vast collection of provincial, repressed, stern women that are usually portrayed in historical dramas of the 20th century (and beyond). I have read that the directors stumbled upon these old film rolls while searching for archive footage for another film. I can imagine them drowning in the sheer amounts of film and the abundance of skilfully composed frames. Nevertheless, the content remains banal beneath the relative beauty of these amateur images.
El Perro Negro: Stories from the Spanish Civil War (2005)
making poetry with raw footage
This is a beautiful retelling of the Spanish Civil War using footage taken by two amateur film-makers in the 1930s: each of them on either side of the divide at war. With what looks like very lo-fi, scarce and unconnected material, the director puts together a beautiful description of how citizens are forced into taking sides at war.
What I find absolutely magical about this account is how it weaves macro and micro stories together: the trickle-up and trickle-down effects between large-scale political, history book history events and the personal stories of these two families.
The issue of the Spanish civil war has been largely silenced since Franco's death in 1975. For someone who grew up in the post-Franco world it is extremely refreshing to watch a film about this mysterious war that no-one dared to talk about for the sake of reconciliation. Despite this silence and the transition to a well-functioning democracy, the divide between the two Spains is still clearly visible. The film therefore benefits from the fact that it is an outsider who tells the story, a Hungarian who comes in with his own experience of political turmoil and life in a defeated country.
It is definitely a film that should be seen in a cinema rather than on video, if only so as to be transported to the 1930s. If you do watch it on video, make sure to turn off the lights and all mobile phones.