JOIN THE BAND: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE UNIVERSE OF ALBERT SERRABy Quintín With very few exceptions, movies about movies are a drag. Among the counterexamples, I can mention Pedro Costa’s WHERE LIES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE, where Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Hullet are filmed in the process of editing SICILIA! But the rule is that movies about movies are made for promotion or for journalistic purposes, and tend to be very flat, even when they intend to pay homage to the principal filmmaker. Shooting where somebody else is shooting is a sort of vampire-art form, one that rarely leads in general to anything with its own value. There is, anyhow, a significant counterexample to this theory, precisely Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella’s CUADECUC, VAMPIR, where the locations and the main character (Christopher Lee = Count Dracula) of a trashy film by Jess Franco are used as raw material for major art. Speaking about Catalan filmmakers, in a time where there aren’t many new forces in cinema, Albert Serra is one of them. A new force can be seen as contrary to the idea of a “new talent,” a concept extensively abused to describe almost every newcomer in moviemaking who’s films are almost impossible to distinguish from the films of other new (or old) talents. But if personal filmmaking is an oddity, there is something much more rare: someone who wishes to make not only original films, but to create a special environment for them, a space that only makes sense if connected to the experience of that particular kind of filmmaking. Like Fassbinder, Serra is one of those, and, also like Fassbinder, he is creating a tribe—a family, a travelling circus that works against the conventions of cinematic behaviour. In 2006, Serra made HONOR DE CAVALLERIA, a striking, minimalistic adaptation of Don Quixote starring two nonprofessional actors, neighbours from Banyoles, Serra’s hometown, in the major roles (in fact, the only roles). An out-of-the-blue masterpiece, the film made a strong impression on a number of critics when shown in Cannes. Then the recruiting began. Serra is a gregarious character: he drove to Cannes with 30 other people in a bus filled by families and friends of the crew. Some people started to hang around with them, especially critics from different parts of the world. Mark Peranson, at times a follower of other living filmmakers (like, guess who, Pedro Costa), didn’t miss the party, and he became a regular in meetings with the sort-of-weird Serra and the much more predictable and easygoing Montse Triola, his masterful producer and right hand. Serra’s approach to actors is rather unique. His films are supposed to be excuses to shoot these people, ordinary folks in a way, but still very special. That’s how Don Quixote (Lluís Carbó) and Sancho Panza (Lluís Serrat) became part of an extended family. Serra and the two of them started playing a game in festivals all over the world: they kept pretending to be their fictional counterparts. When Serra decided to make his next film, EL CANT DELS OCELLS, he hired both Lluíses to play Kings—and Serrat’s father completed the trio. Meanwhile, Lluís Serrat was already being called Sancho by everybody in the crew, and probably in Banyoles as well. Peranson has a natural thing for foreign cultures, and became fascinated with this magic, childish but deeply meaningful world of Serra. He was right after all: Serra is one of the few filmmakers around that believes in reimagining cinema and in the illuminating power of the medium. But also Serra saw something in Peranson—besides the fact that filmmakers tend to like critics that praise their work—enough to invite him to play Joseph, while Montse was chosen to play the Virgin Mary. So Peranson went to the Canary Islands for a week and, suddenly (or maybe as a part of this generalized exchange of roles), he decided to become a filmmaker himself by shooting the shooting. Faced with this challenge, Peranson made the right choice. He didn’t go for a “coverage” of the shooting, and reduced the interviews with Serra to little more than a few phrases in Catalanglish. Instead, he designed his film not as a gaze on Serra’s work, but rather as an extension of it. The only intelligible phrase that Serra pronounces for the camera is really remarkable. He says something like “My only purpose was to film these people moving around, but instead of doing it in a daily life context, I thought it would be better to make them play this kind of role.” WAITING FOR SANCHO takes off from the same idea: to film these people walking, waiting, and talking, only the “people” in this case includes not only the actors playing the Biblical figures, but also the filmmaker and the crew. The very peculiar thing about Peranson’s film is that it keeps Serra’s own world alive, in a medium ground where people are many things at a time. This begins with Sancho himself—at the same time the partner of Quixote, a King, and a fat guy, and who appears wearing the T-shirt that says “Vote for Pedro,” the one Peranson himself made to promote Pedro Costa’s COLOSSAL YOUTH. WAITING FOR SANCHO invites the viewer to relax and enjoy the wonderful wandering of Serra’s clan. Because EL CANT DELS OCELLS is an epiphany where Jesus and cinema play complementary parts, but also, like HONOR, it’s a film about friendship, shown in the caring affection between the characters. WAITING FOR SANCHO is at the same time a way to become acquainted with Serra’s universe, to know what it’s all about, but also an invitation to join the band, to become a friend. In a way, the film is not only intended as a path to understand a filmmaker, but also to get into the mindset of hard-core moviemaking, the only kind of valuable film being made these days. In his other life, Peranson runs the important film magazine Cinema Scope, where this kind of cinema is championed. Now he is making criticism by other means. |
VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL |
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