Berta's Motives

A kaleidoscopic panorama of the world. A visual anthology of twelve short stories by twelve innovative directors from all over the world.

This remarkable companion piece to In the City of Sylvia offers a compendium of images recorded by Guerín in Strasbourg while searching for the traces of a (fictional?) brief encounter some years earlier with a young woman named Sylvia.

A series of video letters between José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas.

On returning from class, a teacher is questioned by his wife, who distrusts his pedagogic project: an “Academy of the Muses” inspired by classical references, which is supposed to contribute to regenerating the world through poetry. The controversial project triggers a series of situations dominated by words and desire.

A man returns to a city to try to track down a woman he met six years earlier.

Experimental silent homage to the origins of cinema, recreating the apparent disappearance of a French photographer in the 1920s.

An author spends a year and a half filming what happens as a new apartment building is built in a neighborhood of Barcelona.

A poetic approach to the island of Lanzarote.

In a peripheral neighbourhood, where the rural and urban worlds meet, the houses of the first migrants who arrived after the post-war period coexist with the new blocks of the dormitory city, where the latest wave of migration is concentrated. This humble corner is now an authentic global village. Good Valley Stories is a sum of constructs, of social, generational and identity, urban and ecological conflicts, but it is also a calm and humanistic look at today’s world.

Documentary tribute to "The Quiet Man" by John Ford. A special tribute that, away from traditional documentary, traces the outline of a cinematographic work of other person and offers a portrait of a society that fascinates the director.

Filmmaker José Luis Guerin documents his experience during a year of traveling as a guest of film festivals to present his previous film. What emerges is a wonderfully humane and sincere portrayal of the people that he meets when he goes off the beaten track in some of the world's major cities.

In Saint-Louis Cathedral, at La Rochelle, in a chapel filled with merchant marine ex-votos, there’s a painting that witnesses the tragedy of The Saphir in 1741. This schooner was becalmed for days and days in inter-tropical waters, with 271 slaves and 30 crew members on board. This painting is like a secret door in a Cathedral that opens on to the great History…

Guerin notes the first references for his next feature film, Historias del buen valle (2025), with an 8mm camera with which he walks through the Vallbona neighborhood.

A Ryokan, by José Luis Guerin to complete the #YoMeQuedoEnCasa cycle. After twenty-one clips over three months, we close the cycle with a jewel that this Embassy is proud to have commissioned. (Embajada de España en Japón)

Memories of neighbors surrounding a violinist who committed suicide naked. Journey to the jungles of Guyana and Suriname in South America, chasing down the infamous gold miners. A sequel to 'Mauris Barres', directed by Jean-Marie Straub, wandering around Mont Saint-Eudil. Jean-Marie Straub, a ‘fighter’ of modern cinema, who explores the physical properties of movies; Claire Denis, an ‘adventurer’ who crosses boundaries and encounters others; Jose, the ‘walker’ who discovers the mysteries of life with the attitude of an essayist Louis Guerin's original cinematic world.