Portabella Premiers at the MoMA

The New York museum is holding a retrospective exhibit to celebrate the premier of his latest film “Die Stille vor Bach”.

EFE - New York - Sept. 9, 2007

The movie director, Pere Portabella, will finally, at the age of 77 be able to attend the premier of his film Die Stille vor Bach (The Silence Before Bach), in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.  Thirty-five years ago, in 1972, he had the opportunity to premier his film Vampir-Cuadecuc but Franco’s government cancelled his passport:  on the 26th of September he will have his revenge with the retrospective exhibit in the museum in New York.
The film, recently presented in the Horizon section of the Venice Film Festival, dedicated to the most innovative cinematic languages, demonstrates through the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, how music can be accessible to anyone.  This full length feature film blends together images of a truck driver playing Bach (interpreted by Alex Brendemühl) with a piano salesman (Feodor Arkine), Bach himself (Christian Brembeck) and the musician Felix Mendelssohn (Daniel Ligorio).
This exhibit on the Catalan filmaker, known for his avantgarde work and his anti-Franco political committment, will run through October 6.  A dozen films will be screened, such a Vampir-Cuadecuc, (1970) and Umbracle (1972), two horror movies starring Christopher Lee, the documentary Informe General sobre algunas cuestiones de interés para una proyección pública (1976) and Warsaw Bridge (1990).
The MoMA will also screen films in which Portabella collaborated with the Catalan artists Joan Miró (Miró 37 – Aidez l’Espagne and Miró La Forja, among others) and Carles Santos (Acció Santos).  Laurence Kardish, Curator of the MoMA Cinema Department, has defined him as follows: “Pere Portabella is an important figure in the history of modern European cinema and not well known in the United States”  “a radical artist who has widened the limits of the cinema”.
His work as a producer has also been outstanding. In 1959 he founded the production company Films 59, which was responsible for the several films that were critical of the Franco regime, such as  Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961).
The program of the retrospective exhibit, simply entitled Pere Portabella, includes two round tables with the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum and the director of the Lincoln Center Filmographic Society, Richard Peña, in addition to two talks on the context of Portabella’s work.  The Catalan director will also be the center of several events organized by the King Juan Carlos I Center and the NYU Catalan Center on the 27th and 28th of September.