Film series: Spain: Memory, Landscape & Light
image from Costa da Morte
Two of the films in this series are being shown in conjunction with professor Patricia Keller’s (Romance Studies/Comparative Literature) seminar Experimental Screens: Mirrors, Memory, Media. Professor Keller writes “Experimental media surfacing from different corners of 20th century Europe, since the emergence of the avant-garde to the Internet age, has a long-standing history of exploring new modes of sensory perception-the relationship between technology and emotion, vision and time, abstract forms and concrete effects. In this course, we will study a range of audiovisual materials from photo-montage and short animation, to surrealist cinema and video art. As we move through different registers, the goal will be to study the language of media, its aesthetic relation to literary forms, and its connection to poetry and philosophy.”
Spanish filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta's All the Night Long (La noche que no acaba) explores Hollywood actress Ava Gardner's near fanatical attachment to Spain after she starred in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (just recently digitally restored and added to our schedule!) that was shot along the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona. Lois Patino’s Costa da Morte is a meditation on a region in the northwest of Galicia (Spain), the vast and rugged terrain of which led to numerous shipwrecks against the rocks amid storms and heavy mist. Both All the Night Long and Costa da Morte will be introduced by Professor Keller. The screenings are cosponsored with the Dept of Romance Studies.
The Silence of Others reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain's 40-year dictatorship under General Franco as they organize a groundbreaking international lawsuit and fight a “pact of forgetting” around the crimes they suffered. This film is also also cosponsored with the Dept of Romance Studies. Please note that due to the coronavirus pandemic, filmmaker Robert Bahar will not be able to visit. (Updated March 10)
