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Interview
8 July 2018 2.00 h

Sergi Lopez

Actor from Vilanova i la Geltrú

SERGI LÓPEZ

The veteran actor from Vilanova i la Geltrú talks about some of his new projects, compares the Catalan and French film industries, and comments on the political consequences for the Catalan culture sector

Things are good for Sergi López. The actor from Vi­lanova i la Geltrú has just had two new films pre­sented at the Cannes film fes­ti­val, Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and one of the fes­ti­val sur­prises, Laz­zaro fe­lice, from Ital­ian di­rec­tor Alice Rohrwacher. Then he was in Sene­gal film­ing Staff Only, by Cata­lan di­rec­tor Neus Ballús, while also tour­ing his one-man the­atre show, Non solum.

You never stop.
A lot has been hap­pen­ing lately, but all good things. It is a great mo­ment. It hap­pens a lot in cin­ema: you have two or three un­cer­tain years, and then every­thing starts hap­pen­ing at once, and you never quite know why. It is what this job is like.
Tell us about Gilliam and his Qui­jote.
He is a very spe­cial guy, over-the-top and won­der­ful. He makes fan­tas­ti­cal and alien films, which is why he loved the novel Don Qui­jote. It is right up his alley. He got a script to­gether 25 years ago and tried to film it. But at the time every­thing went against him: the set was flooded, in Las Bar­de­nas desert, where it only rains every thou­sand years! Now he has gone back to it and has made a film that is iconic in its own right.
What was the film­ing like?
It was amaz­ing. I have a small role, a con­vert who pre­tends he’s Chris­t­ian, but who gets caught pray­ing to Allah and he has to try and get out of it. I asked him if he wanted it to be re­al­is­tic and he said “No, Monty Python style!” In other words, over-the-top, ex­ag­ger­ated, histri­onic. He is mad, a ge­nius, a di­rec­tor who seems to be doing cir­cus, with lots of en­ergy and who likes to laugh but who at the same time has a deep vi­sion.
There was also an­other film of yours at Cannes, ‘Laz­zaro fe­lice’, which won best script.
Alice [Alice Rohrwacher, the di­rec­tor] is awe­some. She makes out­sider cin­ema, far from the es­tab­lish­ment, and she has made a film that is very po­lit­i­cal with­out talk­ing about pol­i­tics. It is a very deep film, very human, with a cen­tral char­ac­ter, Laz­zaro, who is not played by an actor but rather a real per­son. Alice came across him in the street and spoke to him, as he is a very spe­cial guy, with an in­cred­i­ble look. Every­thing is down to Alice. She is smart, lov­ing, with sen­si­bil­ity and real grace.
You’ve just been film­ing in Africa?
Yes, with Neus Ballús. I spent two months with her in Sene­gal film­ing her first fea­ture film, Staff Only. It was great, with a team mostly half Cata­lan and half Sene­galese, but which also in­cluded Chileans, Brazil­ians, all sorts. We were four pro­fes­sional ac­tors and the rest were am­a­teurs. I love that sort of thing. This film will cause sur­prise.
A Cata­lan pro­duc­tion in these po­lit­i­cal times is get­ting rare.
The sit­u­a­tion in Cat­alo­nia is tragic. The film in­dus­try has never been a strate­gic sec­tor here, and di­rect rule made that worse. Here we treat it as if it were the sock-mak­ing in­dus­try, when it is key to the cul­ture. That is some­thing the French see clearly.
How so?
For the French, mak­ing films is not just to make money. No. They are aware what it gen­er­ates thought, and that it shows the world what type of coun­try and so­ci­ety they have. For them, the cin­ema is a sec­tor that is there to ex­plain, and to help their ex­is­tence. They clearly see it as a state struc­ture.
But not here?
Here things were bad be­fore di­rect rule, and with what hap­pened with TV3’s tax bill every­thing fell apart. There are no grants. And no one seems to care. In Spain, but also in Cat­alo­nia, the words cul­ture and cin­ema have been cheap­ened. They have lost the mag­ni­tude and pres­tige they had. No one thinks there’s any­thing wrong with leav­ing the the­atre and cin­ema with­out any money. Mean­while, tech­ni­cians and ac­tors are leav­ing, for France, to the US, to the UK, and that just makes things worse.
Are you op­ti­mistic?
In an even faintly healthy democ­racy it is im­pos­si­ble to begin a pro­ject with a guy who has been elected while in prison or liv­ing abroad. The guy that was elected, who peo­ple voted for! What is that about? For me, even though there is a cer­tain dis­en­chant­ment, with the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment going back on a lot of things (wasn’t Puigde­mont sup­posed to be re­in­stated?), I see peo­ple dis­cour­aged and yet with their will to re­sist in­tact.
What would you like to see hap­pen?
We’re in un­charted ter­ri­tory, and it’s nor­mal peo­ple are scared. But I think that there is a dy­namic at play that can be re­versed. On Oc­to­ber 1 I saw guys in my neigh­bour­hood, where every­one is an im­mi­grant and who do not be­long to any po­lit­i­cal party, de­fend­ing their school and their neigh­bours. There has been a pop­u­lar re­volt, and a ques­tion­ing of how power and de­ci­sion mak­ing hap­pens. We have seen that we have power. And I hope that it does not end up de­flat­ing, and that the strug­gle con­tin­ues.

in­ter­view

The pastorets to Cannes

López is a familiar face in cinemas but his first gig was in the traditional nativity play, Els pastorets. Yet, that experience showed him that what he wanted to act. He began improvising on the streets of his hometown of Vilanova, but once he had enough money, he went to study in Paris. There he met the director Manuel Poirier, with whom he made four films. His fifth, Western, took the Cannes film festival by storm. Since then, López has not looked back and has become Catalonia’s most international star of the big screen.

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