Adolfo Arrieta
Directing
Biography
Adolfo González Arrieta is a spanish filmmaker, considered as the pioneer of independent film both in Spain and France, due to the artisan quality and the unique spirit of freedom of his films. He usually uses variations of his name in the credits of his films, such as Udolfo Arrieta, Alfo Arrieta or Adolpho Arrieta. His cinematic language is very poetic, apart from narrative conventions, which has made it to be compared with the cinema of Jean Cocteau. Having started as a painter, Arrieta began his filmmaking with the short films El crimen de la pirindola (1965) and Imitación del ángel (1966) both shot in Madrid, a milestone for independent cinema in Spain. He moved to Paris in 1967 with Javier Grandes, an usual actor in most of his films, where he would live through the events of May 1968. In 1969 he met Jean Marais, leading actor in La Belle et la Bête (1945), Orphée (1949) and Le Testament d'Orphée (1959) by Jean Cocteau, of whom he had been a former lover. With Marais Arrieta would shot his first feature film, Le Jouet criminel (1969), that was compared to Cocteau's cinema for his poetic nature. With Le Château de Pointilly (1972), he would receive critical praise from Marguerite Duras. He won the Great Prize at the Toulon Film Festival with Les Intrigues de Sylvia Couski (1974), acclaimed by the critics and considered as the first underground parisian film. He would follow with Tam Tam (1976), the record of an uninterrupted party between New York, Paris and Spain; and Flammes (1978), a story about a sexual childhood fantasy turning into a real passion in the adulthood. In the following years he would make Grenouilles (1983), Kiki, la gata (episode of the TV series Delirios de amor, 1989), Merlín (1990) and Narciso (2004). His next film, Vacanza permanente (2006), was awarded at the Lucca International Film Festival, and meant for Arrieta a creative rebirth. It was premiered in Madrid at La Casa Encendida de Madrid on May 27 2007, during the polipoetry festival Yuxtaposiciones, and presented by the writer Leopoldo Alas. In March 2008 the venue La Enana Marrón in Madrid held a partial retrospective of Arrieta's filmography, screening his most outstanding works.
Known For
A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
A diverse group of artists and bohemians gathers at a party to celebrate and wait for a guest of honor named Pedro. As they drink, talk, and wander through the rooms, the much-anticipated Pedro never arrives, turning the event into a surreal, endless vigil. The guests are left to navigate their own desires and existential boredom while hearing the rhythmic "tam-tam" of drums that suggests a coming catastrophe.
Tam Tam
The ex-wife of a famous sculptor convinces her lover to remove one of his sculptures from an exhibition and replace it with a live model.
The Adventures of Sylvia Couski
Paul and Adèle were once lovers and separated but are still good friends, one year after everything seems to take them away from each other. The key of E-flat may be the key of true friendship, but it is Mozart that pushes them apart...
The Kegelstatt Trio
In the fall of 2010, Bozon and co-conspirator Pascale Bodet commandeered the first floor of Paris’s famed Centre Pompidou for 10 days of screenings, lectures and performances that amounted to a counter-canonical history of French cinema. During the ensuing merriment (entitled Beaubourg, la dernière Major !) audience members were invited to observe the daily making of this film, directed by Bozon and written by Axelle Ropert, about an inexperienced young journalist (Laure Marsac) sent to the Pompidou to interview a maverick artistic impresario (Thomas Chabrol). The result is an unexpected love story that is also a record of this landmark exhibition, featuring cameos by Raul Ruiz, Paul Vecchiali, Luc Moullet and more !
L'Imprésario
In the kingdom of Letonia, the young prince Égon spends his nights playing the drums. During the day, he only has one thing on his mind: finding Sleeping Beauty in the kingdom of Kentz and breaking the spell over her. But his father, the king, doesn’t believe in fairy tales, and is completely opposed to Égon’s dream. It’s Maggie Jerkins, an archeologist from Unesco, who will provide Egon with the opportunity to follow his heart.
Sleeping Beauty
A moral adventure: one sees friendships being born and being discarded, under the pressure of avowed authorities such as the family and the prejudices it states, or unavowed as the economy that no individual alone expresses.
Ce que cherche Jacques
On an island in the middle of the ocean, inhabited by men and women-frogs, Nora, a beautiful Russian spy, wants revenge for the betrayal of her lover, the artist Tibor.
Frogs
A couple abducts an "angel" for their entertainment, who will escape with the help of an old man.
Le Jouet criminel
Barbara, a young girl, lives in an old country house with her father and her teacher. One night, she dreams that a fireman enters her room through the window. Having grown, Barbara leaves her father to travel across the world, before coming back to her childhood fantasies: one day, she calls the firemen, and locks herself with one of them in her bedroom.
Flames
A family portrait in which the director profiles his grandmother, Odette Robert. Eustache includes in the film the conditions of its production — he is seated at the table with her, pours her some whiskey, speaks with the camera operator, manipulates the clapboard at the head and tail of the reels, and even takes a phone call. Robert, who was seventy-one, speaks rapidly and tells the story of her life, starting from her early childhood in villages in the Bordeaux region of France. A shorter version of the film ("Odette Robert") was edited in 1980 to be broadcast on television on TF1. The complete film only gained exposure in 2002, when it was salvaged by Boris Eustache, Thierry Lounas, João Bénard da Costa, Jean-Marie Straub, and Pedro Costa.
Numéro zéro
A young boy plays with a top instead of doing his homework and daydreams about his brother and his brother's girlfriend.
The Crime of the Spinning Top
A young woman escapes her father's house and goes to live in the city. There, she realises her father may still be controlling her life through the people she meets.
Le Château de Pointilly
No description available.
La mano de madera
Toñi a trans woman asks a miraculous saint in a church to have a boyfriend, and that is how Lahcen appears in their life, a young Moroccan immigrant who has just arrived in Spain, with whom they will fall in love.
To Laugh, to Sing, Perchance to Cry
Merlin, shot on 35mm, is an adaptation of Cocteau's play "Knights of the Round Table."
Merlín
Documentary about the history of experimental cinema in Spain. FRAGMENTS is a historical survey of “the other” Spanish Cinema — films that brazenly explored their artistic, poetic and conceptual potential. Spanish experimental cinema can be glimpsed in a series of important yet isolated events that FRAGMENTS compiles through various firsthand accounts, film excerpts and documents. For the first time in Spain, a documentary brings together the most relevant of a cinema that is slowly losing its invisibility.
Fragmentos para una historia del otro cine español
Reel 6 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.
Cinématon VI
Surreal experimental film in which angels take part in a murder.
La imitación del ángel
A “Cinéma, de notre temps” series episode directed by french film critic André S. Labarthe, originally aired sometime around 2015.