Benet Rossell

Documentary about the history of experimental cinema in Spain. FRAGMENTS is a historical survey of “the other” Spanish Cinema — films that brazenly explored their artistic, poetic and conceptual potential. Spanish experimental cinema can be glimpsed in a series of important yet isolated events that FRAGMENTS compiles through various firsthand accounts, film excerpts and documents. For the first time in Spain, a documentary brings together the most relevant of a cinema that is slowly losing its invisibility.

Güell Park, Barcelona, Spain. Llúria, a modern child, goes back 700 years in time —with the help of Xiulet and Allioli, two fantastic beings—, to meet the fierce Almogavars, a company of mercenary warriors at the service of the Crown of Aragon, lords of the Mediterranean Sea and cruel scourge of the merciless Saracen hordes.

Colometa is an average housewife with two children to care for in the late 1930's, as the Spanish Civil War is starting and her husband goes off to fight. She had been an ordinary woman working in a shop when she met the lively carpenter who married her, and their life together was without major problems. But now she is forced to raise her children under straitened circumstances, and after her husband dies, her life undergoes another major change as she marries for the second time. Underneath Colometa's acquiescent, forebearing exterior must lie just a few discontents, a few unrealized dreams - but they never surface as she blithely moves from one episode in her life to another.

Experimental short film, On display at Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

In Miserere by Miralda and Rossell, pathos and comedy are closely linked to one another. The liturgical songs that they use for long stretches of this short film refer to human suffering and repentance, while the images counter this by referring to industrial animal breeding and lab experiments. The Franco dictatorship in Spain is contrasted with a subversive/surreal series of images using video footage.

Short Film, On display at Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya; alongside Avenue Boulevard de l'Opéra.

Short Film, On display at Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya; alongside Pa i fang.