AMATEUR FILM UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF AVANT-GARDE - PREGÀRIA A LA VERGE DELS COLLS - Punto de Vista - International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra

FILM FINDER

NEWS

15.01.2021
Punto de Vista announces its educational programme, concentrating this year on sound, and opens enrolments for one of the Punto de Vista Labs workshops

17.12.2020
Punto de Vista offers a first glimpse of its programme and highlights the retrospective devoted to the influential curator Amos Vogel

07.10.2020
Punto de Vista will be at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 7th to 13th October

AMATEUR FILM UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF AVANT-GARDE

PREGÀRIA A LA VERGE DELS COLLS

Country: Spain
Year: 1947
Duration: 15'
Direction: Lorenç Llobet Gràcia

Sinopsis

Drought is strangling a village in the mountains. The situation is unbearable, so the villagers go out in a procession invoking the protection of Our Lady of the Hills. The miracle occurs, and life returns to the village and the fields. Based on Soviet realism in the initial scenes, the film then turns to chiaroscuro and surrealist effects to show the miracle, whereas the final images contain and explosion of colour and movement.

Bio

Born in Sabadell, Llorenç Llobet Gràcia took his first steps in amateur film in the decade before the Spanish Civil War. His unprecedented experimental vein reached its climax in Pregària a la Verge dels Colls, using close-ups and alternation of colour and black-and-white images for the first time in the history of film. Llobet Gràcia was one of the first amateur filmmakers to use background music matching scenes and sound effects.

Selected filmography
¿Suicida? (1934)
El valle encantado (1946)
Pregària a la verge dels colls (1947)
Vida en sombras (1948)
Lo Pelegri (1951)

With thecollaboration of:

Rewind