Ventura Pons
They represented an entire era in the history of Mexican art. For almost half a century they were the benchmark of Catalan and Mexican art. The Pecanins family lived through the Spanish Civil War and saved the postwar period and the dictatorship. They left a gray country and entered the splendid Mexico of the fifties. Another world. They integrated quickly, without losing their roots. The Pecanins sisters, Montse, Tere and Anna Maria celebrated each anniversary of the Pecanins Gallery as a miracle.
Fragments of the memory of three great artists José Pérez ‘Ocaña’ (Cantillana, 1947 - Seville, 1983), Javier Patricio ‘Gato’ Pérez (Buenos Aires, 1950 – Caldes de Montbui, 1990) and Pepe Rubianes (Villagarcía de Arosa, 1947 – Barcelona, 2009) became icons who helped make the city of Barcelona Universal and Pharaoh
The lower part of Barcelona’s best district is a quiet and stately neighbourhood. The House of Columns hides many secrets, and has witnessed many events. The Catalan capital’s multiculturalism has a lot to offer. It’s better to laugh than to cry!
Berenguer wants to be an actor. He fights with all his strength, but it’s not an easy profession for youngsters. His grandfather, an authoritarian patriarch, is against Berenguer's "misguided passion": he only enjoys bringing home young mulato girls. An accident will knock him down. In Los Angeles, Berenguer will search for a secret buried during many years. Will this trip change his fate, his way of understanding the world and the land where he was born, and his own life? It will be a short and powerful emotional journey full of smiles and some tears.
As a photographer, Colita is an undisputed master of the portrait of 20th-century Barcelona. In her garden, she sips tea with her friends, all of them very important women: writers, singers and actresses filled with wit and exuberance. Together, they revisit their memories of intensely lived years: the last two decades of the Franco dictatorship. Just enough to complete the image through the lens of her camera. There is no distance in her art.
A swim instructor dealing with a child terrified of the water is accused of inappropriate behavior -- but the stories offered don't line up, leaving parents suspicious and doubtful.
Spanish director Ventura Pons returns to documentary filmmaking with this study of world-renowned museum expert Ignasi Millet. HIV-positive yet promiscuous, accustomed to opulence yet now struggling to endure Spain’s economic crisis, Ignasi is a fascinating set of contradictions — and Pons’ film is a portrait of both the man and his times.
In 1973, towards the end of the Franco regime, the famous catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda bumped into the literary critic Josep Maria Castellet in Geneva where she lived exiled and she invited him to tea at her house. The writer was a most discrete person and maintained everything that concerned her wrapped in secrecy. Indeed she herself had become a secret or perhaps, even a maker of secrets. However that afternoon, strangely, she opened up and shared many intimacies.
In the district of Gracia, in Barcelona, a nasty old woman shares a flat with a young man, non-conformist. The guy is struggling to find his place in the world. Neither of them let themselves being intimidated, though she holds the power and the young only illusions. The old woman has given up her dreams and the young man is discovering them. A perpetual fight without truce, although both need themselves. Humor, tenderness, agility, great neighbors, a neighborhood of young people, a beautiful girl and a powerful sound track. The positive side of life.
Fifteen stories, contemporary and some historical, where humorous, sarcasm and courage passed bills to pain, old age, death and love, but above all with human stupidity, without concessions, watching her face the difficult life balance and human misery.
Anna returns from Africa, where he worked two years in an NGO, and is hired as a security guard at an exclusive health center on the outskirts of Barcelona. By breaking with her boyfriend and go home, a colleague leaves a camper as temporary housing. Spend a few weeks on a wilderness camping and then installed in the parking lot of a service area of the highway. On a night patrol work meets a young, admitted by court order, do not walk because of paralysis and refuses to reveal his identity.
A family seen at two different periods, some 40 years having passed between the two. A dysfunctional family marked by what used to be called an ugly illness, cancer and death. The characters quarrel, hate each other, and refuse to accept in their predecessors what they will eventually, inevitably repeat in themselves. A family marked by relations of rejection, love and hate of the other, the upstairs neighbors, those strangers from a far-off land, Andalusia in the 1960s, Morocco at present, who will also form part of this repetitive game that is life. To what point is everything a metaphor or symbol of our society? Are we really strangers to ourselves?
This film evokes Valencia illegal gaming back in the seventies. A young peasant -Ferran- plays cards not much to make a living but as a distraction of his daily routine. Ferran meets a larger-than-life character -el chino- who happens to play cards for a living. This other guy is depicted as a Toni Manero look alike but his charisma an arrogance lead the innocent Ferran to join him in his schemes to make money to end up betting all on the next card table. At some point the action moves to Madrid and Ferran steps down losing track of El chino who takes on more dangerous games making a living out of Russian Roulette until the round gets loaded. Based on real events this is no Hollywood epic but it captures the desperation of the characters very effectively.
Silvio is a well-to-do business executive who is seemingly happily married to Marcia. However, Silvio is convinced Marcia is cheating on him, and frequently spies on her -- ironically enough, he usually does so during assignations with his mistress, posh interior designer Claudia. Meanwhile, Daniel, who works with Claudia, is enjoying a vacation with his wife Irina, a front desk clerk at the hotel where Silvio usually romps with Claudia. Daniel is hoping the getaway will help put the spark back into their marriage, but he soon discovers Irina's head has been turned by a trainer from a nearby health spa. And finally, Mariela, Silvio's housekeeper, has stated dating Jorge Washington, who has only recently come to Spain from Peru. While Mariela has fallen hard for Jorge, he's impressed by the romantic and material opportunities his new hometown provides.
Pere Lluc is thirty five and is living an unclear period in his life. He finds out that one of his friends has death 5 months ago and to forget the sorrows he goes out and get drunk and he falls in love.
"El Gran Gato" is the title of this "documented musical," as cataloged the same director, which includes the participation of singers like Tonino Carotone, Sisa, Kiko Veneno, Luis Eduardo Aute, Los Manolos, Lucrecia and Martyrdom. This manager and colleagues pay tribute to Jack Perez, singer and composer who popularized the rumba and died in 1990 when he was only 40 years. The film alternates between two parts: a documentary with more conversations with family and people who knew Jack Perez, and a second in which the aforementioned musicians interpret the best known songs of the musician.
Young aspiring pianist attracts attention of famous musicians. Chance encounters bring them together but expectations must be managed by all.
Fifty-something widow Anita loses her lifetime dream job as a cinema attendant when the new owner wants to tear down the old theater and build a trendy multiplex in its stead. Depressed at first, Anita finds comfort in watching the shirtless hunks on the theater's construction site. She befriends a married excavator operator, Antonio, and the two start their secret candlelit trysts in the site's office cabin. But soon Anita learns that excavators are only needed in the early phase of a construction project...
If one person's destiny were altered (in this case, not dying), how might that event change the lives of numerous other people, or in this case, prevent seven others from dying.
Based on a work of Josep Maria Benet i Jornet entitled "Testament", the film tells the story of an aging professor of medieval literature with the dilemma of deciding who will inherit his essay on "The Book of friend and loved" by Ramon Llull. Feeling near death as a result of illness, he discovers that the ideal person is a young and intelligent student he is in love with and who is dedicated to male prostitution.
In order to prepare for her role as a certain well-known actress, a young woman has lengthy conversations with three different actresses who were good friends with the famous star. Emerging from these conversations are three equally different versions of the past and the events that shaped their lives and careers. This cinematic adaptation of a theatrical work is true to the original, but does not stray far from a theatrical rendering of the story.
Minimalistic frieze fifteen episodes about human behavior (desire, submission, love, jealousy, wisdom, honesty, sincerity, passion, faith, ...) located between two fantastic stories about the will and doubt.
Rosita, a plump and temperamental opera diva, leaving the shooting of Tristan and Isolde in Hollywood, to learn that the producer does not offer the title role in the upcoming film Romeo and Juliet. And travel to Bulgaria after accepting an invitation from Frank, a childhood friend who has a restaurant.
The film takes on a trip through a lively metropolis on the eve of a major holiday, witnessing the love lives, family situations, gender confusion and even a diamond traffic ring uniting some 14 different characters. They all have something in common - they're after love, money, live in or visit the same luxury apartment building, and speak Catalan, in the pulsating and hallucinating Barcelona of the 1990s.
Sole, Mari Pili and Marta are the twenty three young people hanging around who share a flat in Barcelona before the Olympics. Tired of sacrificing to find romance, wonder what need have expected the weekend to go to a nightclub and rolled with the first guy you meet. Then decide to take action and play a game: live an adventure with the first man who asks the name.
Two young friends, urban out-of-a-job types, work out, along with a mate -a professional pusher- a way to get out of the misery they are living in: kidnap the rich guy of the town.
Mario is dominated by his castrating wife, and is also suffering from writer's block. He goes to a local (very mixed) bar where he meets an exhuberant blonde prostitute, through her room mate, a gay gigolo. With Mario's help, the blonde goes on to better jobs in the world of pornography, involving traveling abroad. This may not seem like good news for Mario, but he may also move on to a better phase in his life as a result.
In a small Catalan village take advantage of the visit of an ecclesiastical authority of Rome, during vacations, to organize a conference on the topic of religion and sex. This causes the people to divide into two camps, those who favor and those against the "Congress", until finally after a series of negotiations between both sides, we arrive at consensus. A large mosaic of characters carry the story to end happily, through critical situations with the conservative church.
The confession, sincere and shamelessly, of the painter's life Ocaña and the reconstruction of his world, his provocations and his experiences. Ocaña, with joy and from his creative marginalization challenges: cross-dressing as a provocation, religion and fetishism, repression of machismo, lawlessness, homosexuality ... Marginal life that was hidden under the Franco dictatorship is openly displayed against the backdrop of a unique artist. A legendary and cult film.
