Iván Zulueta

A portrait of the film director Iván Zulueta and his film Arrebato. It features contributions from friends and people who worked with him such as José Luis Borau, Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Gasset and Julio Médem.

An investigative documentary about Basque filmmaker and artist Iván Zulueta. Caught up in heroin addiction and many personal problems, Zulueta vanished from the scene. This film focuses on the lost and wasted years of the director.

A young soldier arrives by train at a lonely station where he has to change. While he waits, he falls asleep, and has a strange dream: at the station he finds a pastry shop that only opens at night: "Ritesti". When the soldier enters the bakery and engages in conversation with his enigmatic and beautiful owner, he also enters, without knowing it, an infernal labyrinth. Part of the series “Crónicas del mal”.

Párpados (the literal translation, “Eyelids”, misses the homophonic “par pa’ dos,” or “a couple for two”) is a 1989 television episode with an intricate script involving a delirious array of doubles, mirrors and word-play revolving around the central theme of amorous obsession.

Recovered Zulueta short.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.

With 'A MAL GAM A' Zulueta brings the lyrical film into the territory of mystico-psychedelia. The cinema as drug, as vehicle for rapture—as will later be seen in Arrebato—is a theme of this most autobiographical of Zulueta’s experimental films (which could also be seen as a documentary of an agoraphobic mode of artistic production), the protagonist is played by the filmmaker himself (“Jim Self” is the trans-linguistic homophone that appears in the credits) and shot mostly in the family villa in San Sebastián.

With 'A MAL GAM A' Zulueta brings the lyrical film into the territory of mystico-psychedelia. The cinema as drug, as vehicle for rapture—as will later be seen in Arrebato—is a theme of this most autobiographical of Zulueta’s experimental films (which could also be seen as a documentary of an agoraphobic mode of artistic production), the protagonist is played by the filmmaker himself (“Jim Self” is the trans-linguistic homophone that appears in the credits) and shot mostly in the family villa in San Sebastián.

With 'A MAL GAM A' Zulueta brings the lyrical film into the territory of mystico-psychedelia. The cinema as drug, as vehicle for rapture—as will later be seen in Arrebato—is a theme of this most autobiographical of Zulueta’s experimental films (which could also be seen as a documentary of an agoraphobic mode of artistic production), the protagonist is played by the filmmaker himself (“Jim Self” is the trans-linguistic homophone that appears in the credits) and shot mostly in the family villa in San Sebastián.

Riot police act against protesters.

A beautiful girl has an intense trip during which she transforms.

A beautiful girl has an intense trip during which she transforms.

With 'A MAL GAM A' Zulueta brings the lyrical film into the territory of mystico-psychedelia. The cinema as drug, as vehicle for rapture—as will later be seen in Arrebato—is a theme of this most autobiographical of Zulueta’s experimental films (which could also be seen as a documentary of an agoraphobic mode of artistic production), the protagonist is played by the filmmaker himself (“Jim Self” is the trans-linguistic homophone that appears in the credits) and shot mostly in the family villa in San Sebastián.

Will More arrives by boat to a "genuine Mediterranean island" and is welcome by "thousands of Chinese girls" who take him to their place and tell him a story about his "ego", which he must immediately look for. Thus he gets to a "wonderful palace", where he meets a hermaphrodite odalisque who materializes the image of his other self and offers him a new and even more fantastic story.

Will More arrives by boat to a "genuine Mediterranean island" and is welcome by "thousands of Chinese girls" who take him to their place and tell him a story about his "ego", which he must immediately look for. Thus he gets to a "wonderful palace", where he meets a hermaphrodite odalisque who materializes the image of his other self and offers him a new and even more fantastic story.

Will More arrives by boat to a "genuine Mediterranean island" and is welcome by "thousands of Chinese girls" who take him to their place and tell him a story about his "ego", which he must immediately look for. Thus he gets to a "wonderful palace", where he meets a hermaphrodite odalisque who materializes the image of his other self and offers him a new and even more fantastic story.

Will More arrives by boat to a "genuine Mediterranean island" and is welcome by "thousands of Chinese girls" who take him to their place and tell him a story about his "ego", which he must immediately look for. Thus he gets to a "wonderful palace", where he meets a hermaphrodite odalisque who materializes the image of his other self and offers him a new and even more fantastic story.

Will More arrives by boat to a "genuine Mediterranean island" and is welcome by "thousands of Chinese girls" who take him to their place and tell him a story about his "ego", which he must immediately look for. Thus he gets to a "wonderful palace", where he meets a hermaphrodite odalisque who materializes the image of his other self and offers him a new and even more fantastic story.

Will More arrives by boat to a "genuine Mediterranean island" and is welcome by "thousands of Chinese girls" who take him to their place and tell him a story about his "ego", which he must immediately look for. Thus he gets to a "wonderful palace", where he meets a hermaphrodite odalisque who materializes the image of his other self and offers him a new and even more fantastic story.

Recovered Zulueta short.

The 1975 Super-8 short Aquarium is Zulueta’s first available incursion into the psychodrama—in which the filmmaker dramatises a disturbed state of consciousness—in which appear lyrical passages of the kind that will be made by the fictional experimental filmmaker played by Will More in Zulueta’s 1980 feature Arrebato. (Senses of Cinema)

Recovered Zulueta short.

Roma-Brescia-Cannes, made in 1974, could be called a lyrical home movie. P. Adams Sitney defines the lyrical film as one that “postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film. The images of the film are what he sees filmed in such a way that we never forget his presence and we know how he is reacting to his vision”. —Senses of Cinema

The title of Te Veo, is a joke with T.V. (television). Consists in a collage of shots in super 8 of images of the TV. The collage is extremely quick, mixing average people with famous paintings, landscapes and churches, etc. The images become more and more abstracts, the referential pre-existing images are transformed by means of extreme close-ups of the screen, which ultimately becomes completely abstracts with texture of the TV like a television pointillism

Uma verdadeira massagem visual para os olhos do espectador com imagens breves de filmes, spots publicitários, notícias e reportagens em uma vertiginosa sucessão, filmada diretamente da televisão. Recuperado pela Basque Film Library em 1991, a partir da única cópia existente.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Filmed before his feature-length Arrebato, Zulueta’s Frank Stein is a personal reading of horror cult classic Frankenstein (1931), filmed directly from its television broadcast and reducing Whale’s original to only three packed and dizzying minutes, during which the film's sensitive monster evolves at an unusual rate.

Kinkón (1971), a silent adaptation of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 classic, King Kong. Zulueta re-filmed a television broadcast of the original, and through creative subtraction and manipulation of camera speed, condensed the original’s feature length to an intensified seven minutes. The cathode-ray flicker and flattening that results from the re-filming defamiliarises the original, but its classical continuity mode of address continues to operate on the viewer, and the increase in velocity makes mesmerisingly urgent the dramatic plot of the original. —Senses of Cinema

A band of young musicians will do the impossible to boycott a song they didn't like at all, and that's supposed to represent Spain in a famous musical contest. An unusual film by the odd Zulueta in which, after the success of Spanish singer Massiel in Eurovision contest, this kind of contests are parodied with an insane story shot without a script and with the performance of several top music bands of that time.

A band of young musicians will do the impossible to boycott a song they didn't like at all, and that's supposed to represent Spain in a famous musical contest. An unusual film by the odd Zulueta in which, after the success of Spanish singer Massiel in Eurovision contest, this kind of contests are parodied with an insane story shot without a script and with the performance of several top music bands of that time.

A band of young musicians will do the impossible to boycott a song they didn't like at all, and that's supposed to represent Spain in a famous musical contest. An unusual film by the odd Zulueta in which, after the success of Spanish singer Massiel in Eurovision contest, this kind of contests are parodied with an insane story shot without a script and with the performance of several top music bands of that time.

Iván and Ginebra meet in a purely casual way and soon discover that there is a powerful attraction between them; but the constant presence of Ivan's roommate, Toby, a strange boxer who is afraid to step into the ring, forces them to redefine their relationship.

Recovered Zulueta short.

Elena, a shy and unmarried girl, belonging to the upper middle class and somewhat marginalized from the general environment, embarks on a trip to the family farmhouse one morning, and when she returns to the city that same day, at night, she is forced to take a strange woman in her car.

Elena, a shy and unmarried girl, belonging to the upper middle class and somewhat marginalized from the general environment, embarks on a trip to the family farmhouse one morning, and when she returns to the city that same day, at night, she is forced to take a strange woman in her car.

A pop-art video of The Beatles’ “Something” made especially for Spain’s TV shot Último Grito in 1968. Iván Zulueta’s first attempts to get his colourful ideas on film and a clear nod to what would become his first feature film, “Un, dos, tres… al escondite inglés.”

A pop-art video of The Beatles’ “Get Back” made especially for Spain’s TV shot Último Grito in 1968. Iván Zulueta’s first attempts to get his colourful ideas on film and a clear nod to what would become his first feature film, “Un, dos, tres… al escondite inglés.”

Since her earliest childhood, Blancanieves has lived with seven men who have cared for and protected her, but this has never been enough for her, because she wants to be a movie star, a dream that disturbs her guardians.

The abusive professional relationship between Luis, an intransigent painter, and Ágata, his traumatized model, takes an unexpected turn when she finds a mysterious self-portrait of him…

The abusive professional relationship between Luis, an intransigent painter, and Ágata, his traumatized model, takes an unexpected turn when she finds a mysterious self-portrait of him…

Recovered Zulueta short.

Recovered Zulueta short.