De occulta philosophia

Villamediana uses his family history to unravel hidden memories of kabbala in Spain. With contemporary images, found footage, archival material, film, literature and ancient Hebrew texts, he creates a new cinematic language for unearthing cultural history.

A young man fascinated by the world of bullfighting lives isolated in the countryside trying to shape his obsession: internal bullfighting, bullfighting with no bull. A spiritual path based solely on the technique as an end in itself. To do this, after a period of training and coaching, he will start building his own space to carry out his great work.

"Caracremada" ("Burnface" in Catalan), a nickname given by the Spanish Civil Guard to Ramon Vila Capdevila, reflects about the libertarian resistance against Franco's regime through the last active guerrilla fighter. In 1951 the CNT ordered the retreat of its militants; however Ramon Vila remained in the woods of inland Catalonia where he restarted the fight operating on his own.

La vida sublime tells the story of a grandson who finds the passion he seeks in the character of his dead grandfather, «El Cuco», and the trip his grandfather made as a youth to southern Spain in the early 1940s. A trip that should have remained a family mystery. The South and his grandfather open up a fascinating new world, a space in which a personal memory that immortalizes «El Cuco» can be created. A tribute by a grandson to the lost generation of the Franco dictatorship era, one which was not able to fulfill its dreams. A quest for the myth, and the sublime. A new writing of family history. A film that deals with the issue of borders. Borders between North and South, imagination and reality, present and past, grandfathers and grandsons, Spain and America, madness and lucidity