Showing posts with label Spanish Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanish Cinema. Show all posts

Wednesday 16 June 2021

Cuadecuc Vampir (Pere Portabella, 1970)

Cuadecuc Vampir

This note was written on the occasion of the screening of Cuadecuc Vampir at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020 where Mr. Portabella's scheduled and much-anticipated attendance was cancelled due to the Covid crises. Fortunately, he managed to participate via Zoom and Esteve Riambau engaged in a conversation with him which you can view over here. — EK


Duke Ellington disliked the term jazz, instead preferring "beyond category" when referring to any type of musical accomplishment. This mesmerising tour de force of audio-visual etching by Catalan filmmaker Portabella, which plays with but shrewdly eschews experimental filmmaking, underground cinema, documentary film, behind-the-scenes film and even fiction, is strictly Dukish in being "beyond category".

The Spanish genre director Jesús Franco was churning out one of his more expensive horror flicks (El conde Drácula), starring Christopher Lee, when Portabella, who was present on the set, made his own film based on the events. Cuadecuc Vampir is a film about images being constructed (with fake fog and cobwebs), and about Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is far more eerie and haunting than not only Franco's film, but anything since Dreyer's Vampyr. It is also a film of political metaphors, the kind one would expect being made under Franco's dictatorship.

Wednesday 14 December 2016

LFF#60: Films Consume Us, Part III


گزارش شصتمين دورۀ فستيوال فيلم لندن، (سپتامبر و) اکتبر 2016 بخش سوم و آخر
فیلم‌ها ما را مصرف می‌کنند
احسان خوش‌بخت

بهترين‌ها: اين‌ها فيلم‌هايي‌اند كه ايده‌هايي تازه و درست پرداخت شده از فرم و برخوردي علمي (و شبه‌سياسي) با ميزانسن دارند

مرد هزار چهره [عنوان انگليسي: دود و آينه‌ها] (آلبرتو رودريگز؛ اسپانيا)
كارگردان يكي از بهترين تريلرهاي سال‌هاي اخير (جزيرۀ كوچك) با فيلمي بازگشته كه تقريباً براي يك ساعت اول نمي‌شود از داستانش كه نسبتاً سرراست هم روايت مي‌شود سردرآورد، اما بعد از عادت كردن به اسم‌ها و سير وقايع كه عمده شان ريشه در واقعيت دارند، يكي از جذاب ترين نمونه‌هاي سينماي ژانري معاصر را در آن مي‌توان تشخيص داد، فيلمي كه به سنت تريلرهاي سياسي فرانسوي/ايتاليايي دهه هفتاد تعلق دارد و دربارۀ مردي است كه كلاه يك ملت را بر مي‌دارد. اين تريلر نفس‌گيري است كه در آن يك گلوله شليك نمي‌شود و هيچ كدام از شخصيت‌هاي اصلي حتي اسلحه هم حمل نمي‌كنند.