Filmoteca’s new season

Ken Loach, Ida Lupino, Sergi López, the Taviani brothers, Ingmar Bergman, Jeanne Moreau, Rita Hayworth, Jaime Rosales and Robert Altman are just some of the big names at the Filmoteca in the new year.

However, at the presentation of the new season, Filmoteca head Esteve Riambau first gave a summary of 2017. Riambau admitted a 9% fall in the number of visitors to Catalonia’s film archive compared to the previous year, even though the venue still received 118,882 visitors in 2017. The difficult political situation “might have influenced this to some extent, but this trend actually started earlier,” he said, adding that “there were series for which we expected more visitors, such as the one dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Sitges fantasy film festival.”

One of the largest challenges identified for this year’s programme is, according to the archive head, finding a “balance between curiosity and the satisfaction of what is already known. Our obligation is to unveil new personalities to our visitors.”

Among the special guests in 2018 will be British director Ken Loach, on the occasion of a retrospective dedicated to him, French director Patrice Leconte, who will take part in a tribute to the actor Jean Rochefort, actor Sergi López, who has made a selection from his filmography and films that have influenced him, Italian director Paolo Taviani, who will present his latest film, with his co-director, Vittorio, and the Barcelona-born director Jaime Rosales.

In addition, the Filmoteca will this year also pay tribute to the actor Pierre Clémenti and May 1968, and the brothers Claudi and Frederic Gómez Grau, whose photographs portrayed the Hollywood productions of Samuel Bronston. Meanwhile, the relationship between cinema and toys will be explored in the Toy Stories series, a joint project between the film archive, the Toy Museum in Figueres and Girona’s Museum of Cinema.

As for exhibitions, as well as those dedicated to the Gómez Grau brothers and Toy Stories, another will feature the work of British photographer Terry O’Neill, who portrayed film stars of the stature of Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Groucho Marx, Ava Gardner, and his former longtime partner, Faye Dunaway. O’Neill has already confirmed his presence at the Filmoteca.

CINEMA