Manuel Esteban Marquilles

A collection featuring rare Daevid Allen and Gong performances and short films. Moody, atmospheric live film of Gong onstage in a cathedral in Montserrat in 1973 with the classic line-up.

A movie based on the Spanish comic strip of the same name.

How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.

Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974 on the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison.

The film was conmissioned by the Galeria Maeght to commemorate the Joan Miró exhibit organized by the French Minsitry of Cultural Affairs in the Grand Palais in Paris that opened on May 17, 1974. The film, that took five days to shoot, shows the smelting and casting process of the work known as Puertas Mallorquinas by Joan Miró. The filming team travelled to the foundry owned by the Parellada family in Llinars de Munt.

The film is divided into two large segments. The first is made up of a couple of fixed shots of the pianist, Carles Santos, playing the Prelude Op.45 in C sharp minor by Frederick Chopin. The second segment shows him listening to this own recording from a loudspeaker until he dons the headphones, therefore letting silence take over the film and consequently also over the audience in the movie theatre. The lenght of the silent shot is for the duration of the prelude.

Commissioned by the Maeght Gallery with the exhibition of Joan Miró, organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs at the Grand Palais, which opened on May 17, 1974 in Paris. This film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (at the Miró) and Tarragona during the implementation process, by Josep Royo, a tapestry by Joan Miró. Five people worked for eight months in the realization of this tapestry, using wool 1200kg and 600kg for the warp. The total weight of 3500kg and a half was six meters wide by 11 meters long. They need a purpose built weaving loom. The day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the tapestry was placed in the lobby of one of the towers when they were demolished.

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with dejá vu scenes that promise us more but remain tensely unfinished. Jonathan Rosembaun said: “few directors since Resnais have played so ruthlessly with the unconscious narrative expectations to bug us”. Learning from the feeling of strangeness caused by Rossellini as he threw well known actors into savage scenery in southern Europe. Portabella makes Christopher Lee wander around a dream-like Barcelona. Without a doubt Portabella’s most structurally complex and most profoundly political film, that is ferociously poetic.

Метафорический фильм о судьбе диктатора. Структура повествования в этом фильме-сказка, довольно свободная. Это история короля фантастической страны Эльдорадо, который из освободителя превратился в жестокого угнетателя и за это был наказан символическим персонажем, олицетворяющим неумолимые Смерть и Время, а точнее сам Ход Истории.

At underground film of the 1st Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry filmed in the Proce Theater in Barcelona on May 25, 1970, in solidarity with political prisoners. The participating poets were: Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere IV), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater.

Short film by Spanish/Catalan film maker Pere Portabella.

With musical accompaniment from the zarzuela 'The drum Grenadiers' by Ruperto Chapí, a pair of custodians are in the basement of the National Library of Madrid showing some canvas awarded with the National Prize for Painting between 1941 and 1969.

The story of a man searching for something, who encounters others, and who wanders looking for the truth.

As publicity for the exhibit Miró L’altre, organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya in 1969, the Board commissioned Pere Portabella to film Miró painting the “poster” for the exhibit on the ground floor windows of the building. Portabella was not interested in simply filming a testimonial documentary. However, he said he would do the film if after the exhibit Joan Miró himself, with the help of the cleaning staff erased his own painting. Joan Miró accepted the idea without a doubt. The complicity between the film maker and the painter is evident in the filming.

Pere Portabella’s first work as a director starts with the following phrase: “defeated…but not conquered”. This may or should be taken as an allusion to the technical K.O. taken by Portabella from Franco’s regime during the sixties as regards his work as a producer. Through the extremely raging playthings of the words of Catalan poet Joan Brossa, Portabella attempts to dismantle the forms of advertising discourse of that time.

The misadventures of a group of young people who seek a better life by becoming bullfighters, the only way to leave their poor existence in the slums of Barcelona.