About

Pere Portabella is a veteran Catalan filmmaker whose narrative features—rich in interludes, plot diversions, atmosphere, and unexpected synchronies between sight and sound—limn the avant-garde and expand the expressive potential of cinema. Portabella, who began his cinematic career as a producer of fiction films implicitly critical of General Francisco Franco, had his passport revoked when Luis Buñuel's Viridiana 1961, which he helped to make, "embarrassed" Spain at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962. When democracy returned to Spain, Portabella served as a senator in the Catalan government. Throughout his various careers, Portabella continued to make cinema, investigating meaning in the moving image and expanding the notion of genre—particularly for horror films, fantasy films, and thrillers.

'Pere Portabella' curated by Mark Nash with accompanying film notes, unless otherwise indicated.

LECTURE: Pere Portabella
A special lecture on the films of Pere Portabella by Mark Nash, curator, writer and Head of Department for Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. Nash recently published Screen Theory Culture (2008, Palgrave) and also presented a retrospective of Portabella at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2007. He was co-curator of documenta 11: Documentary and the Reality Effect in 2002.

LIST OF WORK

Los Golfos (The Delinquents) 1960 | Director: Carlos Saura
El Cochecito (The Little Coach) 1960 | Director: Marco Ferreri
Viridiana 1961 | Director: Luis Buñuel
No Compteu amb els Dits (Don't Count on your Fingers) 1967
Nocturno 29 1968
Miró L'Altre 1969
Miró 37/Aidez L'Espagne 1969
Vampir-Cuadecuc 1970
Umbracle 1970
Play Back 1970
Acció Santos 1973
Miró Tapís 1974
Miró La Forja 1973
El Sopar 1974
Informe generale sobre algunas cuestiones de interés para una proyección pública (General Report on Some Interesting Facts for a Public Showing) 1976
Pont de Varsòvia (The Bridge of Warsaw) 1989
Tren de sombras: Le Spectre De Le Thuit (Train of Shadows: The Spector of Le Thuit) 1997
Die Stille vor Bach (The Silence before Bach) 2007