Le Peuple Interdit

The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.

At the border between Navarre and Aragon we find the moors known as the Bardenas Reales, characterized by the dust and the omnipresence of the northern wind. This is a portrait of a land, but also a journey through Pilar’s memories. It is a glance at the past but also the present, and about how everything has changed, for better or worse.

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

In Garcia Lorca's mother tongue, death is a woman: "la muerte". Daniel slips into the role of "death as a female" and speaks before a video camera on the life and death of the famous Spanish poet. Then the story begins.

A particular reading of the hard years of famine, repression and censorship after the massacre of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), through popular culture: songs, newspapers and magazines, movies and newsreels.

Humor shapes the way Spaniards interact on Twitter: all sorts of topics can be used to make a joke and many anonymous commentators can become celebrities and compete with professional comedians. But sometimes certain jokes that defy political correctness have a high price for those who dare to make them, jokes that can freeze the smiles of thousands of people whose prejudices can put an end to some very successful artistic careers.

A look at the different masculinities portrayed in Spanish cinema through time. (A sequel to “Barefoot in the Kitchen,” 2013.)

An epic journey through Don Quixote's troubled mind, from which five paths to the unknown are opened: to reason, to freedom, to love, to friendship, to adventure; although only three destinations await at the end of an imaginary and audacious existence: the narrative of the adventurous life of Cervantes; the survival of a legendary novel in these heathen times, when the one-armed gentleman is nothing but dust and bones; the memory of the living, writers and scholars, where both the tormented captive and the insane hero, are immortals beings and will be forever.

In Spanish, ladrillo means bricks. It used to mean boom, construction, production, speculation. Today, ladrillo means crisis: disused clay pits, factories that are closed half of the year, ghost-towns, subprime mortgagers facing eviction. Bricks shows how the life of a simple commodity can be the mirror of a global crisis, and tells the story of people who come up with individual and collective strategies to overcome a seemingly desperate situation.