The following list is not a top 5, but merely a list of five Spanish films, in no particular order, which British viewers might not be familiar with. You may have noticed that I have left out filmmakers such as Almodóvar and Amenábar, and films such as El Orfanato and Mar Adentro. This was done deliberately, since those directors and films are already quite well known by the average film goer. So, on to the list!
La Gran Familia Española (Family United) tries really hard to please everyone. With its pastel and gold palette, handsome cast in suspenders and Converse, a painful wedding entrance music montage to the sound of Calvin Harris’ Feel So Close and, of course, the backdrop of the almighty Spanish national team beating Holland at the South Africa 2010 World Cup Final, the film is really desperate to have in its poster one of those laurel encircled quotes saying something like “…feel-good movie of the year!”.
Photo by David Ruiz
This month, the Spanish theatre production company, Ron Lalá, took its new performance ‘Somewhere in the Quijote’ to the Riverside Studios on the banks of the Thames in Hammersmith as part of the second Festival of Spanish Theatre in London. The festival was initiated last year by Mariví Rodríguez Quiñones, University lecturer of Spanish at King’s College, with the aim of promoting Spanish theatre in the UK.
How do you feel about sharing your home with a stranger? To some people this is an odd, if not downright scary, idea. How can you know they are not an axe-wielding murderer? Of course you can never be one hundred percent sure, but I think it is fairly unlikely; when I was growing up, we always had lodgers from abroad in our house, and so far I have lived to tell the tale.
I spent last week in the Highlands. Our first stop was Mull; the island, inhospitable, even in the middle of August, it only has one way roads. This way the voyage turns into a slow pilgrimage, in which we must stop every few minutes to yield the way, every time we do so, we say hello to the drivers we come across, remembering those old habits we used to have when the conversation with other walkers was part of the journey. That greeting is a sign that life here flows slowly, that it has come to a halt in a moment that we will never belong to.
Pinta London launches its fourth season with a very interesting program. More than 60 galleries bring together the most important artists from the Latin world.