Pere Portabella

Directing

Pere Portabella

Born 1927-01-01 · Figueres, Catalonia, Spain

Pere Portabella (born in 1927) is a Catalan director, producer, and politician. In 1977, he was elected Senator in Spain's first democratic elections and participated in the writing of the Spanish Constitution. As a filmmaker, his style is experimental, reaching new aspects of film language, often with a poetic tone and social content. Portabella is hailed as an essential figure in the political and cultural history of Spain.

Acting credits

Marquis de Sade: Justine poster
5.0

Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.

Marquis de Sade: Justine

1969

Filmmakers in Action poster
7.2

What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to protect authors' copyright? What is their legal status in different countries? (Sequel to “Filmmakers vs. Tycoons.”)

Filmmakers in Action

2006

Spain Again poster
6.5

David is a physician who returns to Spain 30 years after his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Now a member of a medical convention, he looks up old friends and finds his former lover, now a married woman with a flamenco-dancing daughter. He and the daughter have an immediate and mutual attraction to each other. He considers running away with the exotic beauty before asking his wife to join him for an extended vacation after the convention .

Spain Again

1969

Drácula Barcelona poster
5.8

In 1969, Jesús Franco and Christopher Lee shot Count Dracula in Barcelona. At the same time, Pere Portabella became aware of this filming, vampirizing it in Cuadecuc, Vampir. Genre and Art-house films had never been so close. Drácula Barcelona tells the story of these two movies.

Drácula Barcelona

2017

Speaking of Buñuel poster
6.0

Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre.

Speaking of Buñuel

2000

General Report poster
6.7

How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.

General Report

1977

Els tapissos de Miró poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Els tapissos de Miró

2023

Poetes, 50 anys després poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Poetes, 50 anys després

2022

Materialista, idealista, cinematógrafo, magnetófono, buen chico y sádico poster
4.0

No synopsis available yet.

Materialista, idealista, cinematógrafo, magnetófono, buen chico y sádico

2012

Constel·lació Portabella poster
NR

Constel·lació Portabella traces the exciting life of the great Catalan film director and artist Pere Portabella , which traverses the cultural and political history of the country and the last seventy years, letting us be carried away by the passion, the intellect intelligence and curiosity.

Constel·lació Portabella

2024

BiBici Story poster
7.5

While waiting to get started on the production of his feature Liberxina 90 (1970), Carlos Duran shot this short (with very expressive support by several Escuela de Barcelona professors): a grimly colourful satire on modern society as such, and on its fascist Spanish variety in particular. "The intrusion into the private life of a human being, of the distinct tendencies that exist in the society we live in, until they fall into chaos." Carlos Durán

BiBici Story

1969

Olímpicament mort poster
NR

A Pepe Carvalho adventure.

Olímpicament mort

1986

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

PRELUDI DE CHOPIN, OPUS 28, NÚM. 7

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni: filmbiografía de Antonio Maenza poster
7.0

No synopsis available yet.

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni: filmbiografía de Antonio Maenza

2012

Behind the camera

The Wheelchair poster
6.8

Don Anselmo, a retired old man, decides to buy a motorized disabled stroller since all his pensioner friends own one. His family strongly refuses him to purchase the vehicle, so don Anselmo decides to take extreme measures to achieve his goal…

The Wheelchair

1960

No artwork available
5.0

Commissioned by the Maeght Gallery with the exhibition of Joan Miró, organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs at the Grand Palais, which opened on May 17, 1974 in Paris. This film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (at the Miró) and Tarragona during the implementation process, by Josep Royo, a tapestry by Joan Miró. Five people worked for eight months in the realization of this tapestry, using wool 1200kg and 600kg for the warp. The total weight of 3500kg and a half was six meters wide by 11 meters long. They need a purpose built weaving loom. The day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the tapestry was placed in the lobby of one of the towers when they were demolished.

Miró tapís

1973

No artwork available
5.0

Commissioned by the Maeght Gallery with the exhibition of Joan Miró, organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs at the Grand Palais, which opened on May 17, 1974 in Paris. This film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (at the Miró) and Tarragona during the implementation process, by Josep Royo, a tapestry by Joan Miró. Five people worked for eight months in the realization of this tapestry, using wool 1200kg and 600kg for the warp. The total weight of 3500kg and a half was six meters wide by 11 meters long. They need a purpose built weaving loom. The day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the tapestry was placed in the lobby of one of the towers when they were demolished.

Miró tapís

1973

Vampir Cuadecuc poster
6.1

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Vampir Cuadecuc

1972

Vampir Cuadecuc poster
6.1

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Vampir Cuadecuc

1972

Vampir Cuadecuc poster
6.1

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Vampir Cuadecuc

1972

The National Prizes poster
6.2

With musical accompaniment from the zarzuela 'The drum Grenadiers' by Ruperto Chapí, a pair of custodians are in the basement of the National Library of Madrid showing some canvas awarded with the National Prize for Painting between 1941 and 1969.

The National Prizes

1969

The National Prizes poster
6.2

With musical accompaniment from the zarzuela 'The drum Grenadiers' by Ruperto Chapí, a pair of custodians are in the basement of the National Library of Madrid showing some canvas awarded with the National Prize for Painting between 1941 and 1969.

The National Prizes

1969

Umbracle poster
5.9

This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with dejá vu scenes that promise us more but remain tensely unfinished. Jonathan Rosembaun said: “few directors since Resnais have played so ruthlessly with the unconscious narrative expectations to bug us”. Learning from the feeling of strangeness caused by Rossellini as he threw well known actors into savage scenery in southern Europe. Portabella makes Christopher Lee wander around a dream-like Barcelona. Without a doubt Portabella’s most structurally complex and most profoundly political film, that is ferociously poetic.

Umbracle

1972

Umbracle poster
5.9

This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with dejá vu scenes that promise us more but remain tensely unfinished. Jonathan Rosembaun said: “few directors since Resnais have played so ruthlessly with the unconscious narrative expectations to bug us”. Learning from the feeling of strangeness caused by Rossellini as he threw well known actors into savage scenery in southern Europe. Portabella makes Christopher Lee wander around a dream-like Barcelona. Without a doubt Portabella’s most structurally complex and most profoundly political film, that is ferociously poetic.

Umbracle

1972

Mudanza poster
4.8

"Mudanza" (Removal) came to be made after the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist was asked for involvement in a project in the Huerta de San Vicente, the home and museum of the García-Lorca family in Granada. The film records the removal of furniture and objects from the building, leaving visitors able to move freely amongst its empty spaces and a silence charged with feeling and resonance and the take from the experience whatever they demand from it - thus making poet Federico García Lorca's emotive and historic absence even more powerful, evident and heartfelt.

Mudanza

2008

Mudanza poster
4.8

"Mudanza" (Removal) came to be made after the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist was asked for involvement in a project in the Huerta de San Vicente, the home and museum of the García-Lorca family in Granada. The film records the removal of furniture and objects from the building, leaving visitors able to move freely amongst its empty spaces and a silence charged with feeling and resonance and the take from the experience whatever they demand from it - thus making poet Federico García Lorca's emotive and historic absence even more powerful, evident and heartfelt.

Mudanza

2008

Mudanza poster
4.8

"Mudanza" (Removal) came to be made after the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist was asked for involvement in a project in the Huerta de San Vicente, the home and museum of the García-Lorca family in Granada. The film records the removal of furniture and objects from the building, leaving visitors able to move freely amongst its empty spaces and a silence charged with feeling and resonance and the take from the experience whatever they demand from it - thus making poet Federico García Lorca's emotive and historic absence even more powerful, evident and heartfelt.

Mudanza

2008

Miro Forja poster
4.8

The film was conmissioned by the Galeria Maeght to commemorate the Joan Miró exhibit organized by the French Minsitry of Cultural Affairs in the Grand Palais in Paris that opened on May 17, 1974. The film, that took five days to shoot, shows the smelting and casting process of the work known as Puertas Mallorquinas by Joan Miró. The filming team travelled to the foundry owned by the Parellada family in Llinars de Munt.

Miro Forja

1973

Miro Forja poster
4.8

The film was conmissioned by the Galeria Maeght to commemorate the Joan Miró exhibit organized by the French Minsitry of Cultural Affairs in the Grand Palais in Paris that opened on May 17, 1974. The film, that took five days to shoot, shows the smelting and casting process of the work known as Puertas Mallorquinas by Joan Miró. The filming team travelled to the foundry owned by the Parellada family in Llinars de Munt.

Miro Forja

1973

The Dinner poster
5.9

Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974 on the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison.

The Dinner

1974

The Dinner poster
5.9

Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974 on the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison.

The Dinner

1974

With Good Reason poster
4.7

A multi-part feature on the governing body of Spain, the Popular Party under Jose María Aznar. Themes include the bombing of Iraq, immigration, U.S. fire in Baghdad, and the manipulation of the media.

With Good Reason

2004

In the same boat poster
8.1

A documentary about the technological progress responsibility in employment destruction, analyzed by philosopher Zygmunt Bauman and others.

In the same boat

2016

Catalan Poets poster
NR

At underground film of the 1st Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry filmed in the Proce Theater in Barcelona on May 25, 1970, in solidarity with political prisoners. The participating poets were: Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere IV), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater.

Catalan Poets

1970

The Silence Before Bach poster
6.8

A beautiful, sometimes faintly bonkers celebration and contemplation of the role Bach’s music plays in the world today. Blending historical reconstruction with very loosely linked ‘dramatic’ scenes and documentary sequences, the film constitutes a playful, painterly sequence of variations on the argument that Johann Sebastian changed the way the world hears thanks to his extraordinary ear for harmony.

The Silence Before Bach

2007

The Silence Before Bach poster
6.8

A beautiful, sometimes faintly bonkers celebration and contemplation of the role Bach’s music plays in the world today. Blending historical reconstruction with very loosely linked ‘dramatic’ scenes and documentary sequences, the film constitutes a playful, painterly sequence of variations on the argument that Johann Sebastian changed the way the world hears thanks to his extraordinary ear for harmony.

The Silence Before Bach

2007

The Silence Before Bach poster
6.8

A beautiful, sometimes faintly bonkers celebration and contemplation of the role Bach’s music plays in the world today. Blending historical reconstruction with very loosely linked ‘dramatic’ scenes and documentary sequences, the film constitutes a playful, painterly sequence of variations on the argument that Johann Sebastian changed the way the world hears thanks to his extraordinary ear for harmony.

The Silence Before Bach

2007

Uno de aquellos poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Uno de aquellos

2009