‘The Greatest Living Film-maker in the World is Spanish and his name is VÃctor Erice’ is an ambitious claim made on behalf of the subject of IT, Sligo’s Dr. Tony Partridge’s public talk on the little known, but highly influential Spanish film maker Victor Erice this coming Thursday.
During the past 40 years, VÃctor Erice has made three – yes, three – feature films all considered masterpieces: (The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), The South (1982) and The Quince Tree Sun (1992)) along with a number of shorter works (The Challenges (1969), Lifeline (2002), Correspondences (2006) and La Morte Rouge (2006)).
These form a body of work that is vital to our understanding of where we stand at this point in time. Why? Because, as Ãngel Fernández Santos says of The Spirit of the Beehive, it “tells us when and where we come from.” This is the magic of Erice’s cinema and this is why his films can be watched again and again.
Erice’s films deal with memory and time, the two most important aspects of cinema. By connecting his own childhood memories with ours, he connects us with our own past, with where we have come from. Erice’s cinema has the wonderful capacity to engage the viewer with memory on a personal, on a social and, indeed, on a universal level.
Tony recalls the moment when he became hooked on Erice’s work: “When I was about 18 years of age, a film called The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) came on RTE2 television. I gave a cursory look at it as I leafed through a newspaper. Then it began grabbing my attention. I was engaged by everything I saw. Then a remarkable thing happened, the film had a twist near the end that simply took my breath away and I felt that the audacity of the filmmaker was breath-taking. How could he dare to take such a risk? How could he dare to do what he did? But yet he had done it. The moment when Victor Erice performed this leap of faith was the moment when I was truly captured by cinema and, from that moment to this, I have always had a deep affection for the work of Victor Erice. To find out what that leap of faith was, I’m afraid you will have to watch the film … which is available – on video – in the IT library.”
This talk will be delivered on behalf of:
Entidades Organizadoras
Sol y Sombra, Sligo Spanish Society
Collaborating Organisation
Instituto Cervantes (DublÃn)
For further information contact:
Tony Partridge
Institute of Technology, Sligo.
Direct: +353(0)71 9155356
Fax: + 353 (0)71 91 60475
Email: partridge.tony@itsligo