Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, the loved director

Spanish cinema is moving.  Last month, Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, director and scriptwriter of movies like “Dark blue almost Black”  (“AzulOscuroCasiNegro”) visited DC to present “Cousinhood” (“Primos”) at the Filmest DC.

He really knows the States. He started his career as a director after being awarded with a Fulbright scholarship to do his masters at Columbia University (New York). Here, he started  to write his directorial debut in English, “Dark blue almost Black”. He even thought about  filming it in Manhattan or  Queens. But a budget is a budget and, eventually, Madrid as his film loaction was the easiest way.

Sánchez Arévalo, who wrote the Spanish series like “Farmacia de Guardia” “Hospital Central” and “Querido maestro”, is working on a couple of projects of programs to be filmed in English and run here in the States, “Where you can now find the talent, where things go much more slowly than in Spain and in a completely different rhythm “. He loves American series like “Homeland” and “Mad men”: “They are incredible, they have a level we can’t even smell in Spain and the reason, of course is money”

His new film will be a comedy about the family to “vindicate cinema as an entertainment art and more so in times of crisis, when people need more of a distraction.” he will  still work with his favorite actors like, Quim Gutiérrez, Raúl Arévalo and Antonio de la Torre, because “they are still the best ones I can find”.If he could film in the States perhaps he would choose Naomi Watts, Reese Witherspoon or Philip Seymour Hoffman, some of his favorites stars. But surely his loved befriend actors would also have to roll in it. 

What do we have to import from the cinema in the US? “A more global vision and the way the Americans sell their cinema”. 

Do American public understand your sense of humor? Because they laughed quite a lot during the screening… “Yes, Outside of Spain there are a lot less prejudices at watching our films, and a lot more respect also” he stressed. 

In “Cousinhood” there is a scene where one of the actors say to the other “I almost love you” (te “prequiero” in Spanish),  a sentence that originated in a real experience he once had. After the screening,  in the discussion, one of the girls in the public confessed to him  “DanieI, I almost love you” and the whole audience laughed and agreed.

Paco de Lucía, the learning “Maestro”

“My name is Francisco Sánchez Gómez, alias Paco de Lucía, and I’m a guitarist.” 

That’s the way the Gaditan guitarist introduces himself on his website. In his concert in Strathmore, Washington DC, a roar of 1600 applauses sounded without an introduction. And it has been a long time since the first time he came to the States. He was only 14 when he performed as the third guitarist of José Greco Classical Ballet Company and traveled to New York, a guitar in one hand, a handful of nerves in the other. Now the unrest of the beginning has become fatigue: 17 concerts and several states in only a month to present “En vivo: conciertos de España 2010”, following a seven years pause .

He remembers the old moments in a country “with more poetry than now”,  but he praises the effusive American audience, always growing. He is used to work in the US: In 1971, he even appeared, dressed as a Mexican guitarist, in the western Hannie Caulder and one of his last Works is the soundtrack for Woody Allen’s film, Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona. “The most important thing is to keep the freshness, I am always learning, even from the worst musicians you can learn.”  But he is surrounded by the good ones: the dancer “Farru” the drummer “Piranha,” the singers “Duquende” or Jacqueline David, present the good health of flamenco on stage. A favorable atmosphere is breathed into the rehearsals with lots of laughs and even bets: “What do you bet there will be echo”? challenged one of them to the “Maestro”?

The author of classics like Entre dos aguas is thrilled for the live recording: “A luxury where you can feel the breath of the musicians on your side. All is spontaneous, lively. Sometimes there are mistakes, but in this state of excitement the adrenaline helps you to find solutions almost always… The live album “has a soul, is human.”

Experts says de Lucía is noted in particular for the dexterity in his right hand, capable of executing extremely fast and fluent “picados” with only two fingers, index and middle. Winner of a Grammy in 2004, he confesses that he is still not reading music at all. At home he does not listen to music, but to musicians. Many of them  Americans, like Larry Coryell, Al Di Meola or Chick Corea, who recently asked him to play together again. He is the first Spaniard who has been awarded, in 2010, with an honorary doctorate from the prestigious Berklee College of Music from Boston, an honor shared with artists such as Duke Ellington and Aretha Franklin. Which American musician would you like to have played with? No doubts there: Miles Davis and  Louis Amstrong. And Ella Fitzgerald singing, can you imagine?”  We can imagine. We can also think of a new introduction for his web page:  “I am a guitarist, I have played in the States and around the World. I am still learning.”

By the way, during the concert there was no echo.

View the list of upcoming concerts.

César Antonio Molina, a poet visits Washington

The writer César Antonio Molina has just launched in Washington DC “Selected Poems”, a bilingual selection of poems written between 1974 and 2005, where the absence and metaphorical journeys appear as major literary landscapes.

The first stop was The University of Maryland. In front of more than one hundred students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Molina spoke about the value of poetry as a genre and stressed his admiration for Juan Ramón Jiménez, who taught Spanish at this university between 1943 and 1951. The author read several excerpts in Spanish, and Douglas E. LaPrade, a professor at the University of Texas Pan American, read in English, and the public could enjoy the reader’s experience at its best. He also performed the double game of translation and of the reasons. How one could switch a verse into another language: “always improving it”, and why some of the poems had been written were solved by author and translator.

Another appointments in the U.S. capital was the Library of Congress. In this space, with more than 140 million documents, many of them related to Spanish culture, the author made a recording that was incorporated into a sound file, which also includes the voice of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez among others. 

Molina, who is the Director of La Casa del Lector in Madrid, also visited Georgetown University in DC where he spoke abut the Spanish language as a unifier of cultures and praised students of Spanish language, whose “parents’ had made a good investment” and recalled the words of Bill Clinton to García Márquez: “I have read you in English, my daughter has read you in Spanish, what more needs to be said …”

In these “Selected Poems”, nature and this world that we are losing appear as inevitable stages of his poetry, always concerned about the existence and fate, always questioning itself. “Poets are the archaeologists who, before the remains of the city of Pompeii, are used to shape plaster footprints almost nonexistent. Our cast is the words, and through them, we want to shape the enigmatic that we never knew existed, “ he stressed.

Galicia, the birthplace of Molina, and Galician are other settings found in “Selected Poems”. A drawing of the Tower of Hercules illustrates the cover and even the English translator, Francisco Macias, told how he had to travel to this region to meet some of the objects named in some of the verses. Macías himself introduces this anonymous quote in the book’s foreword: “Many Critics, no defenders. Translators have but two regrets: When we hit, no one remembers, when we miss, no one forgets “. 

Spanish students who attended this talk, maybe some future writers, without a doubt will recall that, for over an hour, at their university he spoke of poetry. In the continuous quest in search of knowledge that is the journey to adulthood, the verses of “Selected Poems” will help chart a road map as reliable as needed.

Berta Corredor

Spain sounds indie

The Spanish independent music scene has hit American roads and created a peculiar map that future generations will look back on. The platform Sounds From Spain was the perfect ambassador for the new rhythms in today’s multifaceted U.S. festival South By Southwest (SXSW) based in Austin (Texas). There, seven of the most notable Spanish indie bands: Bigott, Furguson, LA,  Za!, Guadalupe Plata, Quique González and Vetusta Morla met and performed their music live. Spain has also participated this year for the first time in the Canadian Music Week.

With a strong emphasis on lyrics, and a distinctively Spanish sound, these bands have started an exciting trend that is receiving increased attention in the United States. These festivals are a reflection of the innovative and diverse musical scene that our country enjoys today: Bigott is a spontaneous artist whose hilarious videos have earned huge acclaim in Spain; Furguson and his experimental post-punk melodies; L.A. with their tribute to the Beatles and The Who and their unique take on current pop-rock; Za! with their direct energy for fans of improvisation; Guadalupe Plata, a treat for blues lovers; Quique González and his particular intimacy; And finally, Vetusta Morla whose intense, melancholic and unconventional rock has revolutionized the Spanish independent scene. This last group had a full house at the U Street Music Hall in Washington DC, a city where they have never played before.

US, the second export market

The data provided by Promusicae (Spanish Producers Association), revealed that the exports of Spanish musical products exceeded 12 million euros in 2010 (almost 16 million dollars), up 3% from the previous year. The United States with 19.3% of the exports, was the second largest market after the European Union. They are followed by Mexico with 12.8% and Argentina with 5.4%.

Not all these bands use English for their lyrics, even though American songs and groups inspire most of them. Many have been friends since they were kids, and cannot even define the style of music they play. For many of these groups touring around the States is a prized reward. They share the energy enjoyed by those who do something that they really like: live music.

Jordi Socías, The Picture Tamer

Francis Ford Coppola sprawls in a wicker chair. Roman Polanski looks defiantly at the camera. A young Penélope Cruz is pensive, perhaps worried about her future as an actress. Or perhaps, she is simply tired.  These are some of the situations portrayed by the Spanish photographer Jordi Socías for the Maremágnum exhibit at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC

Most of the characters do not need a presentation. Many of them share their lives with lights and cameras. Others rub shoulders with literature or politics. Socías creates special moments in a scene without pretense where only he makes the rules: listen to the subjects, find the direction of their look and never show them the pictures “freshly taken.”

One of the most curious pics is one of Dalí with an impetuous look. After a difficult meeting in the painter’s house in Port Lligat (Girona) the conceited artist made the photographer wait “till the right moment appeared”. When a gust of the Tramontana wind raised Dalí’s whisker in a comic stance, Socías took advantage of this magical moment of surprise. This portrait of the open-eyed genius has since traveled all around the world. 

In Maremágnum we also contemplate some portraits of unknown people in a time when everything wasn’t yet invented in Spain: people having fun in fairs or protesting in demonstrations. 

Self-taught, this photographer who has been the graphic editor of the magazine of El País, began his career by chance after working as a watch salesman. Always using “suggestion” as a motto  (even for his half-naked self-portrait after a serious heart operation), he is only missing a single portrait: the one of Clint Eastwood. It will come.

The photos in Maremágnum suggest intimate moments and real atmospheres. Without aesthetic tricks, Jordi Socías shows the reality of some “celebrities” who, like him, are self-made men and women, talented people living as part of a social circus. Thanks to the ability of transforming a portrait into a huge event, all these people, rich or poor famous or not, appear for a moment as the stars of the show, the real ringmasters.

—Berta Corredor

Maremágnum is at the Mexican Cultural Institute in DC through Feb 4, 2012.

Next stops: Instituto Cervantes New York (Feb 23 - March 23, 2012) and Instituto Cervantes Chicago (May 1 - July 5, 2012).

The Invention of Glory, The Invention of Photojournalism

“Do you want a real depiction of a cruel war….?! Then sit down, sheathe the thread and sew without a pause!”. This could be the advice from an editor in chief to his/her colleagues to get a true depiction of a cruel war.  This could also be the advice in the XV century when the only way they had to capture the cruelty of a war was in the form of a painting or a tapestry.  “The Invention of Glory”, the Pastrana Tapestries exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in DC, proves that photojournalism was created in fact several centuries ago. Considered to be among the finest Gothic tapestries in the world, these masterpieces commemorate the conquest of two strategically located cities in Morocco by the king of Portugal, Afonso V (1432–1481): Arzila and Tanger.

“These works form indeed the antecedent of war photography”, states Miguel Angel Aguilar, President of the Foundation Carlos de Amberes, one of the organizers in charge of their restoration. “It is the first time this artistic format is used to depict war scenes, we can almost imagine the cannons firing away, the military music, the shouts of the war …”. The imagination of the artists, sometimes grotesque, was essential to tell the STORY: “Did they want to look more exotic? Then, they painted monkeys, even if they had never seen one” remarks Aguilar. The funny thing is that they drew Moroccan cities like Ghent because this was in fact the only city they knew, and we can see gables and towers painted behind the walls.

It’s a mystery how the tapestries, made between 1475 and 1480, got to Spain. It is known that they became property of the family of Cardinal Mendoza, defender of Juana la Beltraneja, wife of Alfonso V. The Mendoza family yielded them to the Collegiate of Pastrana in the XVII century, because they didn’t have enough space to hang them in their palace.

Another question that comes to our mind after seeing this exhibition is… How would these artisans portray conflicts such as the one in Afghanistan, the unrest in the Middle East or even the changes after the so-called “Arab Spring”?

The answer: at the National Gallery through January 8, 2012. From DC, the Pastrana Tapestries will travel to the Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas (Feb 5–May 13, 2012); the San Diego Museum of Art (June 10–Sep 9, 2012); and the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Oct5, 2012–Jan 6, 2013).

Ferran Adrià, The Cook Who Shared

Did you know that the restaurants were created during the French Revolution? In these days most of the chefs worked for the court of Louis XVI in France. When the court dissolved during the struggle all these cooks became unemployed. To earn their living they began to cook for other people: restaurants were born.

This was one of the stories the Spanish culinary legend Ferrán Adrià shared with the audience during the presentation of his new book, “The Family Meal” at George Washington University in DC. Accompanied by chef José Andrés, he gave several lessons as “It’s impossible to know everything about cooking” (only in the Amazon there are more than 400 types of fruit, can you imagine how many different plates?), and “it’s important to be good at every step”.  For the funniest one he looked in the audience for a woman with a miniskirt to ask who invented that type of clothing. When someone gave the name of the designer Mary Quant, he jokingly corrected that, even with their hairy legs, Romans were the first to wear miniskirts. Quant only invented the concept, and “this is what we chefs do, we create concepts”.

Adrià also explained the future of  El Bulli, the very prestigious restaurant in Roses, Gerona, where in 1983 he began working as a dishwasher, “a very important task because if they get  ill, the cook has to clean the dishes. El Bulli, was nominated several years in a row as the best restaurant in the world while he was the chef.  However, he realized that all that success wasn’t perfect when his mother, after reading in a newspaper that he received another award, commented “You again?!”. So, he thought, “if my mother thinks that about me what will my foes think”. Therefore, in January 2009 he decided to create a new project: The Bulli Foundation, a sort of think-tank for cooking creators with cuisine as a language. The kitchen will be a workshop for experimentation and it will welcome each year 15 chefs from all over the world and 8 “agitators” that should foster the most effective creativity. All their creations will be shared on-line everyday and in 2014 all the archives will be translated and available around the world.

Ferrán Adrià didn’t use deconstructions, liquid nitrogen or spherification in this talk, but friendliness. He taught that creativity is a way of living, an attitude that should be shared. “I don’t want to be perfect, I want to astonish”, he confessed. And at the end more than 1500 people stood up and applauded.

E•CO. A Reason to Think

Are you interested in the environment?  Do you feel restless when pictures try to communicate a complaint? If so, then visit E•CO the photographic exhibition at the Instituto Cervantes Chicago (through January 12th, 2012). When the Spanish Ministry of Culture asked curator Claudi Carreras  to identify a group of collectives from Europe and Latin America to make a visual essay about the environment, he had no problem finding twenty of them. Nature is a very provocative theme and the result is essentially a human history. In an original layout with huge wall murals, including a giant image of a tree, and some video installations that create an immersive experience, the powerful images unsettle with this message: human beings have a complicated relationship with the environment and its contradictions

Versus-Foto collective from Peru in his project The CREMI: The Other Nature focuses on a psychiatric hospital located in the Peruvian rain forest where patients are free to be outside. The disturbing images of these people suggest a connection between the wilderness of the jungle and the wilderness of the mind. We can see images of hallucinations and suffering in a dreamlike and colorful landscape. Beauty and suffering go hand in hand. In Rain Brazilian Cia de Foto presents a different relationship between man and nature. They waited 42 days in a deluge to capture an image of rain as an aesthectic and dangerous tool of creation. The result offers images that seem to come out of an old movie, or perhaps a science-fiction movie? In “Friendly Fire” the Italian collective Terra Projet studies the contamination caused by uranium weapons used during the Balkan war. Officers, volunteers and civilians are victims of uranium contamination The collective East & Ost from several countries of Western Europe explores the polluted water of the Danube in The Danube: environmental inventory. Human beings are once again depicted as victims of their own deeds. The Electronic Waste project, produced by the Pandora collective from Spain, is another example of a worrisome reality. In 2020 the electronic waste, from computers, DVD players and cell phones, will be 14.8 million tons. Much of these polluted items are shipped to Africa where workers with no safety precautions or protective clothing break them down. They went to Ghana and took pictures of one of the world’s biggest landfills. Some of these images are displayed on a wall and the result is quite perturbing. In Sustainable choreography for a Chinese cycling team, the Spanish collective, NOPHOTO give us a visual performance by a cycling team in an industrial landscape. And, also from Spain, the group Blank Paper talks about the importance of cars while asking us how long dreams last. E•CO wakes us from a very disturbing dream opening our eyes to the reality of a harmed environment all over the world. At least art and creation always give a second chance to continue discovering, disturbing, thinking…

E•CO. At the Instituto Cervantes Chicago. From Dec 5 through Jan 12. More info: http://www.spainculture.us/calendar/383/