Pere Portabella Movies
Spanish director and producer Pere Portabella (sometimes known as Pedro Portabella) earned a degree in chemistry before co-founding the Films 59 production company with Francisco Molero in 1959. This influential company was responsible for Marco Ferreri's El Cochecito/The Wheelchair (1959), Carlos Saura's feature-length debut Los Golfos/The Hoodlums and Luis Buñuel's Viridiana (1961). Interested in experimental cinema, Portabella was remarkably unconcerned with whether or not mass audiences liked or understood his work. His debut work, Nocturno 29 (1968), was filmed without dialogue and like all his early works received extremely limited release. Portabella threw his hat into the political arena in 1977 and served as a senator until 1988. Afterwards, he returned to the film industry with the Catalan film Pont de Varsòvia/Warsaw Bridge (1989). In the early '90s, Portabella directed a few episodes of the Catalan television series Made in Barcelona. In 1997, Portabella produced José Luís Guerin's Tren de Sombras: Le Spectre de le Tuit, the haunting tale of a photographer who mysteriously disappears while taking an early morning stroll around a lake. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi- 2010
Filmmaker Ricardo Iscar profiles a healer whose methods are of another era in this documentary. Mba Owona Pierre is a man of no small importance in the jungle village of Cameroon that he calls home -- Pierre is the local medicine man, and he helps his neighbors get well through folk remedies that have been used in the village for generations. While most of Pierre's remedies have a long history behind them, some are old enough that he's one of the few men who remembers them well enough to use them, and Dansa Als Esperits (aka Dance To The Spirits) introduces us to the healer and the techniques that are slowly fading into history, as well as capturing a sense of the mystery behind life in the jungles. Dance To The Spirits was an official selection at the 2010 Rotterdam International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- 2008
- NR
Real-life drama and documentary-style filmmaking blend with surrealistic whimsy in director Pere Portabella's passionate look at the ties between classical music and the construction of contemporary Europe. From a scene of Bach patiently teaching his son Christoph Friedrich how to play the piano to a truck driver who plays the composer's music on his harmonica, a pianist who plays the Goldberg Variations while rolling through his enormous loft, a Bach impersonator leading tourists through Leipzig, and Felix Mendelssohn's curious discovery of the St. Matthew Passion via a piece of meat wrapped in sheet music, this puckish, almost kitsch collection of skits takes a playful look at the legacy of a classical composer whose music still retains the power to inspire and influence. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- 2000
Surrealist master Luis Bunuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre. This documentary, directed Jose Luis Lopez Linares, tries to illuminate some of these contradictions. It features interviews ranging from the historical -- Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes -- to the personal -- his wife and children. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- Luis Buñuel
- 1997
Director José Luís Guerin uses several types of film media and distinctive lighting techniques to explore the mystery of Paris lawyer and amateur filmmaker Gerard Fleury who on November 8, 1930 disappeared on a lake near the village of Le Thuit in Normandy while looking for proper lighting conditions around the lake shore. A challenging and arty drama, much of the story centers around the events leading up to the disappearance and is based on some recently discovered, but poorly preserved home movie footage that was shot just before Fleury vanished (though it looks convincing, the footage is totally bogus). Interwoven around these home movies are shots done in new black-and-white film of the same locale and color sequences depicting the people around Fleury. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1990
At the beginning of this experimental Catalan film, the camera is at the (fictional) post-award reception for a book entitled Warsaw Bridge. After following one group of cocktail-consuming literary hounds after another for quite some time, the film officially "opens" with its credits. Thereafter, scenes which may or may not have something to do with the book appear. All of them are portentious and symbolic in some fashion, none of them connect to any sort of sustained storyline. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Paco Guijar, Jordi Dauder, (more)
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