Víctor Erice (1940–) has directed just four features and a handful of shorts in a little over 60 years (the shorts have often been the standouts in portmanteau films). He also contributed a series of beautifully crafted “correspondences” with Abbas Kiarostami that were the subject of a joint exhibition first staged in 2006 (it came to ACMI in 2008). In the studiedness, poetic precision and contemplativeness of his approach to cinema, as well as his meagre productivity, Erice’s career can be compared to that of Carl Dreyer and Terrence Malick (at least up until the 2010s). The connection to the work of these great, visionary filmmakers doesn’t end there – Erice is equally a filmmaker of environment, light, lyrical composition and of characters who are inseparable from or mired in a particular time, space and historical moment. Often touching on the legacies of the Spanish Civil War – profoundly so in El sur (1983) – his is also a cinema of strong female characters forging their identity within masculine worlds. Often staged as acts of speaking, of finding voice, its origins are mapped out by the child memorably played by Ana Torrent in Erice’s sublime debut feature, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973). This season presents virtually all of the work that Erice has made for the cinema, along with the series of video correspondences he conducted with Kiarostami. It pays tribute to one of the most cinematic and painterly of filmmakers, an artist who is often preoccupied by the material and melancholy legacy of cinema as exemplified by the travelling projectionist in The Spirit of the Beehive, the memory of early filmgoing and mortality in La morte rouge (2006) and across recent summary work, and return to feature filmmaking after 31 years, the extraordinary Close Your Eyes (2023).
7:00pm THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
Víctor Erice (1973) 99 mins – Unclassified 15+
Set in the aftermath of Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War, but made in the dying days of his regime, Erice’s visually striking meditation on the power of imagination is widely considered one of the greatest Spanish films ever made. After watching James Whale’s Frankenstein at a travelling cinema screening, six-year-old Ana (played by the remarkable Ana Torrent) finds her life in a Castilian village haunted by her memory of the film, with it becoming a mirror of the ghosts and ruins of the Civil War. A powerful act of resistance under fascism, Erice’s film’s profound simplicity is also a testament to the transcendental force of cinema itself.
8:55pm THE QUINCE TREE SUN
Víctor Erice (1992) 134 mins – Unclassified 15+
Filmed every day over two months, Erice’s beautiful, precise and profound documentation of the creative process of painter Antonio López Garcia attempts to capture the shifting temporal and material qualities of nature, light and life and brings together many of the director’s overriding preoccupations in a Kiarostami-like fusion of documentary and fiction. Moving between the eternal and the quotidian, the work of art and daily life, Erice explores the flow, passing and stilling of time in a fashion that characterises “every work of artistic creation” seeking “permanence” (Erice). Screening in the revised and restored director’s cut from 2017.
4K DCP.
7:00pm EL SUR
Víctor Erice (1983) 95 mins – G
A group of characters attempt to deal with the legacy of the receding past, the Spanish Civil War and the divisions it has forged within families and between generations. Erice’s haunting second feature is a luminously rendered portrait of childhood memory that provides a fascinating companion piece to The Spirit of the Beehive. Through precise, lyrical, light-sculpted compositions Erice reinforces his status as a truly visionary filmmaker of environment, temporality and experience. Preceded by La morte rouge Víctor Erice (2006) 34 mins – Unclassified 15+. Erice’s hauntingly beautiful elegy to the memory of cinema ponders its corporeal legacy along with the ghosts of the past.
35mm print of El Sur courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.
CTEQ ANNOTATION
El sur
by Miguel Marías
9:25pm VÍCTOR ERICE–ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: CORRESPONDENCES
Víctor Erice and Abbas Kiarostami (2007) 96 mins – Unclassified 15+
Born within a week of each other in 1940, Erice and Kiarostami created bodies of work that express a series of profound affinities that include a preoccupation with childhood, the experience of everyday life, the porous boundary between documentary and fiction, and the painterly, temporal and cinematic capacity of light. Created for an exhibition exploring the “correspondences” between the two great artists, these ten video exchanges are like messages in a bottle, exploring deep, poetic connections across time, geography and history. Full of playful, knowing references to each other’s work, including a screening of Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s House? to a room of children in one of Erice’s most beautiful entries.
7:00pm PASSING THE TIME: FOUR SHORTS BY VÍCTOR ERICE
Víctor Erice (2002-18) 54 mins – Unclassified 15+
An important aspect of Erice’s work in the 21st century has been his stand-out contributions to a range of portmanteau films focusing on specific themes and events. This program brings together three of these beautifully crafted and meticulously detailed shorts: Lifeline (2002), Ana, tres minutos (2011) and Broken Windows (2012). Placing Erice’s work alongside that of his peers, each film explores the passage of time, the resonance of place and the legacies of history and everyday life. The program concludes with the more recent Prayer (2018), a montage of time-worn photographs shot over many years in the same place.
8:10pm CLOSE YOUR EYES
Víctor Erice (2023) 169 mins – Unclassified 15+
Erice’s first feature in 31 years concerns a director on hiatus (played by Manolo Solo) tracing a new lead on the disappearance of his close friend and actor (played by José Coronado). Luminously shot on both film and digital video, and filled with gently haunting references to cinema’s past, from Hawks’ Rio Bravo to Erice’s own long-term creative relationship with The Spirit of the Beehive’s Ana Torrent, this late-career masterpiece reflects upon a life lived through cinema and the artform’s fading significance – or possible rebirth – in a rapidly changing modern world.