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Pere Portabella, one hundred years of freedom where art becomes resistance
“Acció Portabella” displays an international tribute to the filmmaker who turned cinema, art and politics into a single gesture of commitment and poetry.
Pere Portabella is one of the freest, most radical and fruitful voices of contemporary Catalan culture. A creator who has crossed cinema, art and politics as if crossing a territory without borders, turning each project into an act of poetic resistance and each image into a stance. A brave producer, undisciplined filmmaker, cultural activist and uncomfortable thinker, Portabella has made culture a space of freedom, risk and commitment.
To commemorate his centenary, the Ministry of Culture has presented the program "Acció Portabella", a great collective celebration that wants to claim the artistic, political and poetic dimension of one of the essential names in the history of cinema. Minister Ernest Urtasun and the Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, Sònia Hernández, have announced the proposal at the Filmoteca de Catalunya, epicenter of a tribute that will unfold throughout the year a constellation of activities, exhibitions and screenings.
On February 11, when Pere Portabella (Figueres, 1927) turns 99, the Year of Portabella will be officially inaugurated, which will last until the day he celebrates his centenary. It will not only be an anniversary, but an invitation to rediscover a work that continues to challenge the present, drawing bridges between cinema, art and critical thought.
The program will cover all the facets of the creator: the producer who, in the midst of Franco's regime, took decisive risks making possible legendary films such as Viridiana by Luis Buñuel or El cochecito by Marco Ferreri; the experimental filmmaker who turned the screen into a space for thought with works such as Vampir-Cuadecuc, Umbracle or Informe general; and the committed intellectual who actively participated in the Transition, drawing a bridge between creation and civic responsibility.
Acció Portabella brings together, in its first phase, 62 entities —20 international— including art centers, festivals, film libraries, universities and thought foundations. Spaces such as the CCCB, the Miró Foundation, the Tàpies Foundation, the Círculo de Bellas Artes or the MoMA in New York, which will reissue the retrospective it dedicated to him in 2007, are part of this global cultural network. The Filmoteca de Catalunya will have a central role, as guardian of his legacy and driving force behind the great retrospective that will circulate through film libraries around the world, with the support of the FIAF.
Seminars, lecture series and exhibition proposals at the Reina Sofía, the MNAC, the CCCB or the Filmoteca d'Andalusia, as well as the complicity of institutions such as the Cinemateca Portuguesa, the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Toronto International Film Festival or the Jeonju International Film Festival, constitute a tribute of international dimension.
Portabella is, in short, a creator who has made freedom a form of art, and art a form of freedom. A name that resonates like a persistent echo in the country's cultural memory, reminding us that culture is not only beauty, but also courage, risk and conscience.
