Artur Tort

Island of Tahiti. French government official De Roller is a calculating man with impeccable manners, capable of dealing with both high society and the locals he frequents in shady joints.

At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan leads an expedition under the Spanish crown in search of the first westward route to the Spice Islands. He embarks on a perilous journey across the uncharted Pacific, where his fleet faces starvation, mutiny, and the psychological toll of endless seas. Upon reaching the shores of Cebu, Magellan is pulled into a fatal conflict with the natives by his drive to spread Catholicism, culminating in his tragic doom.

The life of the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey during a day of bullfighting, from the moment he dresses up to the moment he undresses.

A 101-hour long reflection on the construction of Europe, its cultural identity and its foundations through the complete adaptation of the texts ‘Conversations with Goethe’ by J. P. Eckermann, ‘Hitler’s Table Talks’ and ‘Fassbinder über Fassbinder: Die ungekürzten Interviews’ (a compilation of interviews with the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, which is used as a counterpoint to the first two books). The texts are read, page by page, by non-professional actors.

At a party in Barcelona, Helena hopes to meet an old lover from who she is still in love. While the night moves forwards, her initial sensuality becomes disdain.

1774, shortly before the French Revolution, somewhere between Potsdam and Berlin. Madame de Dumeval, the Duke de Tesis and the Duke de Wand, libertines expelled from the puritanical court of Louis XVI, seek the support of the legendary Duc de Walchen, German seducer and freethinker, lonely in a country where hypocrisy and false virtue reign. Their mission is to export libertinage, a philosophy of enlightenment founded on the rejection of moral boundaries and authorities, but moreover to find a safe place to pursue their errant games, where the quest for pleasure no longer obeys laws other than those dictated by unfulfilled desires.

An homage from Serra to one of his idols, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, shot in a nightclub full of characters that resemble the ones of Fassbinder films. The title comes from the favourite drink of “Beware of the Holy Whore” characters.

Max, Álex, and Jaime decide to camp near the summit of the Irazú Volcano with the purpose of testing the telescope they inherited from Fidel. However, whether by whims of quantum physics or simply because the stars don’t always align as we wish, the night, the conversation, and the music lead the friends down unexpected paths.

August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest king of France, surrounded by his relatives and doctors.

Death wanders aimlessly searching someone to send to the otherworld. The last human has died and only the remains of a society that now cannot be remembered stays. And the animals, that have understood how to outlast us, look at it from afar. What is death without someone that creates the legend?

Ingrid Caven sings about 16 moments from her life in a unique concert at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.

Casanova meets a new servant who will witness his last moments in life, from a castle with its libertine 18th century atmosphere to the poor, shadowy Northern lands. There, his rationalist way of thinking and mundane world will succumb to a violent and romantic force, represented by Count Dracula.

Short film on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Filmoteca de Catalunya using fragments from unused footage of the film Pacifiction.

Catalan director Albert Serra’s follow-up to his magisterial The Death of Louis XIV is another forensic documentation of the Sun King’s final breaths. Here, however, Versailles is replaced with the glow of the gallery.

In an ambiance loaded with tension, intellectual doubts and creative frustration, Rainer Werner Fassbinder writes and teaches the staging of a theater piece about the 18th century Libertiage at a great theater in Berlín.

The film takes place in Ireland – an Ireland where people speak Catalan with a Fassbinder accent – from the 1930 to today, and follows in several parallel directions the sprawling saga of two rival gold mines, the exploitation of artists by Capital, and the simultaneous opening of a brothel where women do not like men. Because he does things his own way, Albert Serra’s most narrative and wordy film was not meant for cinema: produced by the Venice Biennale, it was part of an installation, its chapters shown simultaneously on several screens. Singularity could very well have been called “Velvet Goldmine”, as it sings the meeting of brothels and tunnels, of a golden stud and lustful bodies (both shown as abstractions).