Pere Portabella
By Charlotte Stace
Pere Portabella has spent more than six decades treating cinema as an art form and an act of resistance. Beginning as a producer behind projects including Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana, he later developed his radical vision, shaped by censorship, secrecy and opposition to Franco’s dictatorship.
The Committed Gaze celebrates that trajectory through a programme of screenings drawn from work made between the 1960s and 2020. Films such as Vampir-Cuadecuc, Umbracle and Informe general reject traditional forms of storytelling in favour of fragmented images, political tension and the thrill of being asked to look again. This programme of screenings allows us to approach a body of work that understands cinema as a place where form itself is also a political position.
Part of a centenary tribute, this exhibition is ideal for anyone who likes their cinema stylish and intellectually rebellious.