“For me, death is beautiful,” he says. Juan Espada del Coso, mortuary conservator University Clinical Hospital of Valencia. “I am with them and I feel comfortable. I talk to them as if they were living people. they don’t answer me, but from the gestures I see that they want to tell me something ”.
John is the protagonist of ‘Every view is …’, a documentary (or not) directed in 1981 by Angelo Garcia del Val cursed and marginal film of Valencian cinema, a cult work that has now been restored by the Filmoteca de València, where this Thursday is re-proposed as part of the programming of the Show.
Considered one of the most unclassifiable and singular figures in Spanish cinema, García del Val met Espada when he was studying at the Faculty of Medicine and thanks to this he met Espada morgue attendant allowed him to film his daily work in a close, raw and even affectionate way.
Formol, saws and “Vertigo”
In the film – which begins with the images of the inmates of the old Bétera asylum and the protagonist in his home – we can see Espada handling the corpses, removing them from the formaldehyde rafts, drilling them and cutting them with electric saws while the sound of “The Nutcracker” or the “love song” of Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock.
We also heard from the curator of the morgue ponder with a little humor on the soul, on fear, on loneliness, on life, on death and on one’s work. “When I inadvertently step on a corpse, I ask for forgiveness, just as I would ask a living person so it doesn’t hurt that they step on it,” she acknowledges.
With a budget of 400,000 pesetas at the time (around 2,400 euros), García del Val was able to start shooting with the money from the sale of an apartment and, as Sonia García collects in the Valencian Audiovisual Dictionary, continued to finance it through the sale of cinematographer Miguel Ángel Montes’s vinyl collection, a turntable, a super 8 team and a comic book collection. Even after filming was over, she also had to sell the camera she had used to pay for the sound lab. Apparently, He also met with four South American spiritualists to expand the budget.
Despite all efforts, the then UCD government gave “Cada ver es …” the “S” ranking, reserved for “softcore” cinema, which limited its exposure to “special rooms”. And when it was ready for the premiere, the ministry told García del Val that the film could not benefit from the Spanish cinema protection rights for being shot in 16mm, a format considered non-commercial in Spain.
The support of Ovidi and Berlanga
Finally, after a campaign to collect signatures addressed to the then Minister of Culture, Javier Solana, who received the support of Ovidi Montllor, Luis García Berlanga or Vicent Garcés, among others, the production house Tabarca has obtained the exhibition license e ‘Every view is …’ it could be released on October 14, 1983 at the Xerea cinema. Before disappearing from the rooms, collected what would now be 9,152.97 euros and reached the figure of 5,430 spectators.
A few years later, García del Val himself settles in the Filmoteca of Valencia a couple of prints in 16 and 35 mm of the film, a standard and several negatives. And in 2022 the institution managed to restore one of these copies thanks to a Concession of a season of classic films, an initiative of the Association of European Film Libraries (ACE), so that it can be displayed again.
And this Thursday at 20:00 with the presentation of Inma Trull, Recovery Manager of the Filmoteca, and the Cinematographer for the film, Miguel Ángel Montes. “It’s a film with a very different visual violence from what we currently see in theaters,” explains Trull. You don’t see blood, you don’t see shots, you don’t see anyone attacking another. It is a film with the dead, about the dead and which makes us reflect on life ”.
a different kind of violence
For this reason, the restorer of the film doubts what the public reaction will be in 2022 in the face of a disturbing and unknown film like this one. “I expect something akin to a mixture of awe and respect in front of a man like García del Val who fought like a wild boar to get a film like this off the ground without the support of industry or administration,” he says.
For the latter, Trull accepts that the unclassifiable Each view is … yes it can be described, at least, as a “cursed film”: “It is cursed because Ángel made the film as he could, he had all the difficulties in the world and very few have seen it, but he did what he wanted and that’s how it is came well “.
