Time: 5:00pmVenue: Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, Laws Building. Room 102, London E1 4NS
Professor Brad Epps (University of Cambridge)
‘Between Opacity and Clarity: Josep Maria Forn, Pere Portabella, and Catalan Cinematic Representation under Franco’
This talk examines the cinematic representation of Catalonia in the late 1960s and early 70s, when Catalan culture, and especially the cinema, despite a relative 'liberalisation', continued to be the object of considerable censorship. Reflecting on two very different filmmakers, Josep Maria Forn and Pere Portabella, and two very different modes of filmmaking, neo-realism in Forn’s La piel quemada (1967) and the neo-avant garde in Portabella’s Nocturn 29 (1968) and Vampir cuadecuc (1970), the talk addresses questions of audience and intelligibility, speech and silence, entertainment and resistance.