Since we started Documentary Visions in 2012, we have programmed more than 60 documentaries that have allowed us to debate and reflect on various topics, always outside the mainstream and the discourse of dominant values and which, precisely for this reason, we wanted to show. In this case, however, we want to reflect on the same documentary with an almost unknown work: «Joaquín Jordá and…». With it we want to pay tribute both to the protagonist, Joaquim Jordà, and to its author, Martí Romo.
Joaquim Jordà (1935-2006) is probably the father, in our country, of what today we call creative documentaries and one of the key references of Catalan cinema of the second half of the 20th century. His name is irrevocably associated with the School of Barcelona, along with Carles Duran, Gonzalo Suárez, Vicente Aranda, José María Nunes and Jacinto Esteva, with whom Jordà co-directed «Dante is not only severe» (1967), considered the Manifesto film of the movement and model of the renewal proposals. Of all of them, Jordà is the only one who remained faithful, until the end, in the break-up budgets of that current and the one who has exerted the most influence on the younger generations of filmmakers.
Martí Romo, co-founder, with Joan Martí Valls, of the «Central del Curt» and the «Cooperativa de Cinema Alternatiu» (1974-1982), began his career in 1970, in the midst of the Franco dictatorship, with a very clear vocation for vindication of a national culture. His documentaries-interviews with Carles Santos (1981), Joan Perucho (1991), Palau i Fabre (1993), Leopoldo Pomés (1994), Llorenç Soler (1996), Ricard Salvat (1998), Miquel Portero Mustio (2000), Joaqui Jordà (2001), Antoni Padrós (2004), Julieta Serrano (2007) and Joan Margarit (2008), among others, are a good example. Of many of these characters, the only filmed interviews, as is the case with us, are theirs, thus becoming inescapable references for subsequent work on these characters.
With a direct style, without aesthetic concessions, almost militant cinema, Martí Roma compiles, through several interviews, Jordà’s life experience from his beginnings at the Escola de Barcelona to his ideas about what it means to make movies . A reflection that embraces from the Lumière brothers to the present day. With interventions by Esteve Riambau, author of the book «The School of Barcelona», and filmmakers José Luis Guerín and Llorenç Soler, among others. An essential document to understand the work of one of the mainstays of independent cinema in our country.
As always, for the presentation and the subsequent discussion, we had the presence of the director.
Data sheet
Title: Joaquim Jordá and…
Director: Martí Rom
Screenplay: J.M. García Ferrer and Martí Rom
Production: Cine Club Engineers Association
Chamber: Raül Fabregat and Simó Andreu
Edition: Oriol Carbonell
Direct sound: Simó Andreu
Year: 2001
Duration: 78′