Movies: Pere Portabella

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 des...

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....

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....

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…...

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....

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 cons...

Miguel, a poor young man living in Franco's Spain becomes a bull fighter to escape starvation....

An unprejudiced portrait of Spanish folklore and a crude analysis in black and white of its intimate relationship with atavism and superstition, with violence and pain, with blood and death; a story of terror, a journey to the most sinister and ances...

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

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....

What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to protect authors' copyright? What is their legal status in different countries? (Sequel to “Filmmakers vs. Tycoons.”)...

David (Mark Stevens) 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 da...

Portabella is putting forward the second part of one of his historic works, the “General report on certain matters of interest for a public screening”, which peeked out in 1976 at the start of the political transition process after Franco’s death. Th...

This latest feature from the eccentrically experimental Catalan director Portabella is a beautiful, sometimes faintly bonkers celebration and contemplation of the role Bach’s music plays in the world today. Blending historical reconstruction with ver...

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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...

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Eight people from very different backgrounds cross paths in Barcelona, Spain. Lawyers, musicians, translators, security guards, call center agents. They are all immigrants. Some have just arrived, others arrived years ago, leaving behind a war, a dic...

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 o...

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, J...