Pere Portabella

"The Silence Before Bach" is a melange of genres including narrative vignettes and documentary sequences on the theme of the transformational power of great music. At one moment his camera records a subway car packed with passionate cello-playing musicians; at another he is following a guide who gives tours of Leipzig dressed in full Bach regalia; and in a third he stages Felix Mendelssohn's discovery of sheet music for the 'St. Matthew Passion' used by a butcher to wrap meat. (Film Forum)

A black-and-white silent about the shooting of a Dracula film with Christopher Lee

A team of professional movers empties out completely the Museum of the poet Federico García Lorca, in the Huerta de San Vicente of Granada. (KG)

The film is divided into two large segments. The first is made up of a couple of fixed shots of the pianist, Carles Santos, playing the Prelude Op.45 in C sharp minor by Frederick Chopin. The second segment shows him listening to this own recording from a loudspeaker until he dons the headphones, therefore letting silence take over the film and consequently also over the audience in the movie theatre. (KG)

It goes in depth into the future Eisenstein-like structure of Portabella's films which do not advance through a lineal narrative, but rather by a succesion of semi-autonomous scenes and almost always unexpected links.

The film takes place on the night of the execution of militant anarchist Salvador Puig Antich by Franco's regime. Using simple cinematic conventions, Portabella's documentary involves five former political prisoners gathered in a farmhouse to prepare dinner and discuss the problems with long prison terms. (KG)

In Umbracle, an aleatory horror film that paints a critical image of Francoist Spain, Portabella continues his exploration of the language of experimental cinema and develops his aesthetic of combining documentary with reenactment. He worked with Christopher Lee to produce an "ideal and predetermined cliché[d]" image of an actor: "Lee offered to perform my ideas with pleasure. I even managed to get him to do the hardest thing an actor can do: nothing." (pereportabella.com)

Playback is presented as a short rehearsal in a double sense. It is a satellite of the constellation of works that Portabella dedicates to the analysis of the "materiality" of aesthetic and cultural languages. (KG)

A man plays a piano piece using his right hand and a white ball.

A female professor, a writer, and an orchestra conductor -three characters, two couples- attend a grand literary cocktail party. The writer has just won the prize for his book "Warsaw Bridge". The winner answers the journalist's questions one after another, but he is unable to come up with a synthesis of the plot of his book. They will simply have to read it. (imdb)

Through the extremely raging playthings of the words of Catalan poet Joan Brossa, Portabella attempts to dismantle the forms of advertising discourse of the time.

The Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya commissioned Pere Portabella to make this film for the Joan Miró retrspective exhibit in 1969. The film was made by combining newsreels and film material from the Spanish Civil War with prints by Miró from the series "Barcelona" (1939-1944). The film ends with the painter's "pochoir" known as Aidez l'Espagne.

Pere Portabella was commissioned to film Miró painting the "poster" for the exhibit on the ground floor windows of the building. Portabella was not interested in simply filming a testimonial documentary. However, he said he would do the film if after the exhibit Miró himself, with the help of the cleaning staff erased his own painting. Miró accepted the idea without a doubt. (TK)

Forty years after the first 'General Report', Pere Portabella now portrays the Spanish and Catalan political present from the perspective of social movements such as the recent 15-M or sovereignty's process in Catalonia as an alternative to the traditional parties. Rather than would a conventional illustrated report or documentary, the film also reflects on the nature of film language. (jsanchez)

A screening of the whole text of the play by Joan Brossa, El sol con cara with a dramatized reading by Lina Lambert (voice) and Eva Maria in sign language. This representation took place in Barcelona on February 26, 2003 in the Convent of Sant Agustí as part of the Brossa viu event organized by the Espai Brossa and the SGAE within the framework of La presència forta: 5 anys Espai Brossa. Included at the end of the short Joan Brossa is interviewed by Pere Portabella in 1991. (KG)

This documentary is the synthesis of the clandestine filming openly political by Pere Portabella and his environment in collaboration with Octavi Pellissa on the script, Manuel Esteban on photography and music by Carles Santos. The film made a panoramic both profound and ironic. (imdb)

The film, that took five days to shoot, shows the smelting and casting process of the work known as Puertas Mallorquinas by Joan Miró. (imdb)

Abstract images of people being drenched by a water jet. (imdb)