FAMILYSTRIP

Luis Miñarro – Scattered fragments of a biographical journey between film and utopia

Valerio Carando

Born in the Barcelona of the fifties, among priests and guardias civiles, aspiring to holiness and fearing damnation, Luis Miñarro has sublimated his childhood anxieties entertaining a visceral dialogue with that extraordinary window onto the imaginary that the Venus movie theatre, just a short walk from the Sagrada Familia, used to provide for him on a regular basis, every weekend. During those holiday afternoons, the vivid excesses of Technicolor would open up a gap, a possible way out, in the black & white surface of daily life. Enter a train of Disney-esque fawns and wax masks, errors and plots, prairies and metropolises, body snatchers and pin-ups. B-movies and guilty pleasures. Celluloid dreams (and nightmares), the delight of the tender years: where all began.

During the sixties and seventies, young Miñarro is a voracious filmgoer and art-house animator. He is a disciple of Miquel Porter Moix (thanks to whom he discovered the masterpieces of German Expressionism and Soviet avant-garde, seen on incomplete, deteriorated 16mm prints). Meanwhile, he takes part in the activities of the Istituto italiano di culture and the Institut Français, whose film retrospectives rely on footage forwarded by diplomatic bag, thus bypassing Francoist censorship. Along with Roc Villas, he founded the film club Ars. He was a programmer for the film society Mirador, curating retrospectives and talks (among the many sessions organized for Ars, mention should be made at least of one dedicated to Buñuel’s Nazarín, blessed by the presence of Francisco Rabal in the flesh). Over the same period, in France and in Andorra, he organized film seasons on the works forbidden by the Francoist censorship: Makavejev, Szabó, Jancsó, Borowczyk, Pasolini. Around the mid-seventies he began to write for the monthly magazine Dirigido por…, thus renewing former predilections (for example, writing the first critical study of the magazine on Douglas Sirk). This also fuelled interests developed under the sign of a more mature awareness (e.g., Italian cinema, hat was to become over that decade one of his wildest passions).

After years of intense activity in advertising, and having reached a certain financial stability, Miñarro can turn towards a deeper commitment, becoming in just a few years one of the most prestigious European producers of independent films. Here are some key titles: Quixotic/Honor de cavalleria (2006) and El cant dels ocells (2008) by Albert Serra; Liverpool (2007) by Lisandro Alonso; In the City of Sylvia (2007) by José Luis Guerín; Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (2009) and The Strange Case of Angelica (2010) by Manoel de Oliveira; Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010 Palme d’Or in Cannes; Still the Water (2014) by Naomi Kawase; Les Unwanted de Europa (2018), The Luminous View (2020) and I morti rimangono con la bocca aperta (2022) by Fabrizio Ferraro.

According to Miñarro, filmmaking means to help breathe life into an idea, constantly questioning roles and competences. Writing critical essays, contributing to the discussion in film clubs, participating in financing – and therefore in giving shape to – projects in which you believe (i.e., potential films) does not stretch the meaning of making cinema. To nourish and orient thought means to consummate a conscious, authorial gesture: the difference is mainly on the “quantitative, not qualitative” level. Henri Langlois made film with his projector, according to Godard: Miñarro, even before embracing film direction (Familystrip [2009], Blow Horn [2009], Falling Star [2014], Love me not [2018], Emergency Exit [2024]), made dozens and dozens of films first with his pen and later – without any ironic hints on our part – with his cheque book too, in the capacity of producer or co-producer (contributing to the making of over forty films, all of them sought for, pursued, and willed).

The Pesaro Film Festival pays tribute to Luis Miñarro showing his dazzling debut as director of fifteen years ago, Familystrip, to the Italian audience. A home movie, not an easily marketable object in the first place, born under the auspices of deep intimacy and yet capable of becoming a universal gesture, a no-frills musing on the transience of all things. It is a virtual journey throughout the 20th century and throughout fleeting experience, found in the slurred speech – crystallised by film – of those fathers and mothers, of those affections, now succumbing to the wearing advance of time. Film as an antidote meant to exorcise, however ideally, the spectre of death. Film as an antidote against obliviousness.

in collaborazione con l’Instituto Cervantes di Roma” nella sezione dell’omaggio a Luis Miñarro.

With the participation of:
Maria Luz Albero Calvo MOTHER
Francesc Miñarro Bermejo FATHER
Lluis Miñarro SON
Francesc Herrero PAINTER:
Pablo García Pérez de Lara GUEST 1
Verónica Font GUEST 2
Hisako Eguchi GUEST 3
“Sort” THE DOG
Idea and director :Lluís Miñarro
Cinematography: Pablo García Pérez de Lara & Christophe Farnarier
Editing :Sergi Dies & Valentina Mottura
Sound: Verónica Font
Mixtures: Ricard Casals
Post Production : Oscar Peláez