Portabella vindicates radicalism in Venice

A.Q. – Venice

In a festival characterized by the presence of hollywood-type productions, the two Catalan productions screened yesterday at the Lido, vindicated  a cinema of simplicity and aesthetic radicalness.  José L. Guerín presented  En la ciudad de Sylvia (Sylvia’s City), a film about the masculine search for the eternal feminine, that disconcerted audiences and gained followers after the first two showings.  In The Silence Before Bach, Pere Portabella has taken the figure of the composer as a starting point to talk about musical architecture and the creation of the great pillars of European culture.  Sukiyaki Western Django was also presented yesterday, a kind of spaguetti western directed by Miie Tekashi.

Portabella, a Catalan surrounded by Hollywood in Venice

ANGEL QUINTANA.  Venice

In The Silence Before Bach, Pere Portabella has taken the figure of the composer as a starting point to talk about musical architecture and the creation of the great pillars of European culture.  Both films were presented on the same day and it has been noted that after them some things are beginning to develop.

In 1997, Pere Portabella produced Guerín’s Tren de Sombras (A Train of Shadows).  Chance has made possible for them to meet at the Lido in Venice, ten years later.  However, this time Portabella is back as a director with The Silence Before Bach, a non-narrative film in which the filmaker takes the reconstruction of Bach’s world as an excuse in order to weave a game of music and the power of the cinema to create architectural forms from their representative spaces.

The Silence Before Bach transmits a strong poetical sensation and certifies once again how Portabella’s films go beyond institutional models to penetrate the territory of art and vindicate the absolute power of the image.  The screening of The Silence Before Bach in Venice coincides with a golden moment in the career of the filmaker.  Two years ago, a retrospective exhibit in Buenos Aires of all his works put his name on the international film scene again and he became a myth for certain movie buffs and experts.   However, Portabella already had a name in the art world.  He had been to Documenta in Kassel long before Ferran Adriá, and The Silence Before Bach will premier at the end of the month in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.