Here is a very good interview of David Bowie about the festival he is curating (mentionned on a previous post). This interview is taken from the official website and was given to Time Out.
So let's keep on the pleasure with two 'heroes' of mine : Bowie and the Spanish cinema !
T.O. How did you discover these films? Did you see them in theaters, on television, on DVD ?
D.B. All three.
T.O. Is Spanish-language cinema a particular passion of yours ?
D.B. It is now. For this festival I chose to go with either a single European director or a personalized overview of a genre of some kind.
I heard that the work of the director that I had homed in on was to be shown in Spring by another organization so I opted for my other choice, namely Latin American and Spanish film of the last one hundred years and what a fortuitous one it has been! It's so exciting to dive headfirst into this world. Such talent and great innovation going on. Like many people, I was really only aware of the most obvious work, Almodóvar, Buñuel, Saura and a few others. But being thrown in at the deep end, this is how I like to find things. And I really make the effort.
T.O. This is such a fascinating array of films. Is there anything that links them together ?
D.B. Terror. Mine. It was imperative to me that I pull together an eclectic choice not too familiar to the audience. Discovery was the keyword. I could call this selection, ‘ One Hundred Years Of ‘Look What I’ve Found’.
T.O. It’s interesting that there are no films by Pedro Almodóvar, or Carlos Saura, who are considered the biggest names in Spanish-language cinema, on your list. Why is that ?
D.B. And no Buñuel, unhappily. Devising a one hundred year presentation has been harder than I possibly could have imagined. The opener on the 10th of May, ‘El Automóvil Gris’ was one of the few existing great films of the 1910’s. And when I heard that Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes were available to perform against it, it seemed to be falling into place so easily.
But then the 20’s posed a problem as very little was made ‘till the talkies and what was made is in dreadful shape. I compensated by using two 30’s movies. One of them being a very rare showing of Dos Monjes (Two Monks), showing that German expressionism was alive and kicking in the mid-thirties in Mexico. This was recommended by Carlos Gutiérrez of Cinema Tropical who has been instrumental in booking all the films. The forties lightens up a little with ‘Aventurera’ with its suicides, prostitution, dancing in fruit hats. Oh yea!
Buñuel nearly got the fifties with Los Olvidados but there are legal battles over it apparently so I’m working on the very dark Argentinian piece ‘La Casa del Ángel’ by Torre Nilsson. By the time of Alea’s 1968 classic ‘Memories of Underdevelopment’ into the present I found it harder to choose from the overwhelming number of great movies being made. So I really had to lose the obvious choices and go with more little known pieces that I felt may not have been as widely seen. For the 90’s, Medem’s ‘Lovers From The Arctic Circle’ for instance, rather than ‘Tango’ say or ‘All About My Mother’, brilliant as they are. For every one that I placed there are fifteen I had to pass over.
T.O. I’m so delighted to see The Spirit of the Beehive on your list. I think it’s one of the best films about childhood ever made. The recent Machuca also explores childhood with great intelligence. Do you think it’s accurate to say that Spanish-language cinema excels in depictions of youth ?
D.B. Yes, and I think there’s one very cogent reason for that. It’s possible that Latin America, having been plunged in and out of war and revolution so consistently for so much of its existence, has the child in all that it surveys. Identity is still forming. So the child of the film, whether tormented or betrayed, in awe or in rapture, is reflecting the conditions of an ever changing and evolving identity.
T.O. I am a huge fan of Aventurera, also. Did the amazing theatrics of Ninón Sevilla, the film’s star, ever inspire you ?
D.B. LOL, erm…no
T.O. Are you a fan of the “new wave” of directors emerging from Argentina—Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Trapero, Albertina Carri ?
D.B. Of those three I only know Martel. And what a find she is. I can’t wait to see how she will develop. She’s working in a swelter of claustrophobic sensuality, not all of it ‘good’ sensuality. She’s creating life patterns rather than straightforward narrative-with-back-story. Her work is very exciting.
T.O. How often do you go to the movies ?
D.B. Maybe once a week. Not like I used to. I’ve become a DVD guy. "
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