Cinema has been and is present in the life and literature of Enrique Vila-Matas. The Filmoteca de Catalunya has proposed a White card to select 10 films in a cycle that will be presented by the author himself, in a talk with the director of the Filmoteca, Esteve Riambau, this Wednesday. Afterwards, one of those 10 films chosen by Vila-Matas will be screened according to personal criteria that go beyond the position of these films in the history of cinema.
That first movie is ‘The spider’s strategy’ (1970). “Bernardo Bertolucci was essential for me”, explains the writer in conversation with EL PERIÓDICO. “I spent a week in Parma with the absurd idea of meeting him, since he didn’t live there, but I went to the filming locations. I met him 10 years ago, but I didn’t want to tell him how important he had been to me, instead we talked about Borges, from whom he adapts one of his stories very well.
The spider is part of the latest novel by Vila-Matas, ‘Monteviedo’. And ‘Spider’, by David Cronenberg, is another of the writer’s favorite films, although the Canadian has preferred to select ‘A History of Violence’ (2005) for “its surprising, ambiguous climate, the film ends and you are left with many doubts. I also really like ‘Eastern Promises’ and ‘Spider’. It influenced me in my novel ‘Dublinesque’.
From an American classic, John Ford, he has chosen ‘The Irishman’s Tavern’ (1963). “For many years, influenced by ‘Cahiers du cinéma’, I thought that Ford was a reactionary director. But by Juan Marsé, Joan de Sagarra and Javier Coma, with whom we had a social gathering every Sunday, I discovered where Ford’s cinema was going and I changed my position”, explains Vila-Matas. “They always chose ‘Desert Centaurs’ as his best film, and I think so too, but selecting it would have been redundant. ‘The Irishman’s Tavern’ is closely linked to the joy of living”.
It is also in the ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ cycle (1999). Vila-Matas remembers that it meant his return to a movie theater after not going for a while and that he was left captivated from the first second. “I have taken it more for the music, for Cuba, than for Wim Wenders, who is a director who interested me a lot for years”. The same thing happens with Béla Tarr’s ‘The Man from London’: “The initial impression was enormous, that long sequence-shot at the beginning left an impression on me”.
For him, Alfred Hitchcock is the greatest filmmaker of all time, but he has not opted for one of his films, but for the documentary ‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’ (2015). “So I have the two filmmakers at the same time. Before, he had preferred Godard, because of his ideas about cinema, to Truffaut. But over time I began to enjoy the pleasure of narrating this one ”. One of his favorite films is ‘Psycho’, a film closely linked to him for family reasons: “Norman Bates’ mom’s skull scene scared my mom so much when he saw the movie for the first time.
The lesser known ‘Simba’ (1955) appeals to children’s terror. “I had written about my fear of the Cheyenne Indians in a movie I saw as a child. It was the first time I saw different beings, my first foray outside the warmth of the family”, recalls the author. He doesn’t remember what that childhood movie was, and he chose ‘Simba’ for the scene of the siege of the Mau-Mau to a home of white settlers, a moment that produced similar terror in him.
The presence of ‘Tam Tam’ (1976) by Adolfo Arrieta, and in which he intervened as an actor, is a tribute to the cinema represented by this independent: “I have admired him since I met him in Madrid, 50 years ago, when I also met Michi Panero and I ended up playing ping pong at Lucía Bosé’s house. She is in the cycle not because I participated, but because I admire the free way in which she shot ”.
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Among the most recent, Vila-Matas has leaned towards ‘Diamonds in the rough’ (2019) by the Safdie brothers: “I turned on Netflix, came across this movie and couldn’t stop watching it until the end. He proposes different ways of filming”. And for the French production ‘Ni le ciel ni la terre’ (2015), about a French patrol in Afghanistan: “I was in a hotel, in France, and I see that they are making a war film on television. I don’t like them, but I’m getting hooked little by little. It’s very mysterious, shot on infrared film.”
Vila-Matas, who directed the short ‘End of Summer’ in 1970, appeared as an actor in films from the School of Barcelona and was an editor of ‘Fotogramas’, affirms that “this selection could be like any other. It is the result of a somewhat capricious system, conceived as my memory came into play”.
2023-09-04 17:29:20
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