Albert Serra: "Politics is a disco and it is out of time"

The filmmaker Albert Serra says of himself that he is the most important auteur filmmaker in Spain.

In the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival they agreed with him.

He presented

, his last film.

Ovation and French devotion to Serra.

He was born in Banyoles (Girona) in 1975. This is his tenth film.

And the first that has a plot.

Even a narrative.

It is shot in Tahiti (French Polynesia) and is an aesthetic and conceptual reflection on colonialism,

, populism and new experiments with nuclear weapons.

The protagonist is the superb French actor Benoît Magimel.

And with him are Pahoa Mahagafanau, Marc Susini, Matahi Pambrun, Alexandre Mello and Sergi López, among others.

The film opens on September 2.

Serra left Cannes anointed as a director to the taste of there.

But in Serra, his risk cinema is coordinated with his attitude.

.

He is eccentric.

He is very sure that in the rudeness and clever imposture of his work there is a non-transferable form, there is his own language.

And he has been recognized.

In interviews he shoots without limit or fear.

She has a good habit of not

when she speaks.

This time there is a plot in one of his films... For me, the change in

is to incorporate new elements, such as a plot, but without forgetting those that belong to my cinema.

It is the quadrature of the circle: trying to do something different that at the same time has a certain coherence and explains something that people can understand.

I have avoided doing an exercise in super refined style that does not go further.

The fact that there is a famous actor in the film also conditions it a bit. In what sense. Well, he must have some narrative characteristics... He couldn't do what he did in

, you know?

This was an exercise in freedom without concessions.

And it is not that nobody demanded me to do something different now, but it was necessary to explore in another territory.

Mind you, I think

maintains the innate spirit of my cinema.

What if the fact that there is a plot in the film helps to see the other virtues of the film? For example? Of course.

What was invisible to many viewers in my previous films now becomes clearer.

There was nothing to compare with, there were no references.

Sometimes you have to know how to take advantage of boring moments to enhance some things that are not seen otherwise.

You have to have a bit of narration so that the achievements of atmosphere and more conceptual can be more perceptible. That before seemed like an aberration, telling something... Well, not so much.

He told it differently.

And without fearing baroque. A term, "baroque", stigmatized. It is that the Baroque is demanding.

There is something suffocating about it.

And people, for the most part, prefer the simple, the easy, the comfortable.

When the simple centrality of two characters saying something disappears in a shot, it doesn't matter if you see it on a movie screen or on a mobile phone, some are confused, or don't understand, or get bored.

Baroque, depending on the circumstances and with people willing to take risks, becomes a very interesting exercise. Are you a baroque artist? It could be so, but at the same time in cinema you should be careful.

The accumulation of elements should be spontaneous or random.

If you provoke baroque, you fall into pastiche, into the mannerist. Intimacy as a plot is now a hegemonic theme in cinema, but you have preferred to talk about the others since Polynesia, with colonization in the background. so many devotees is nothing but laziness.

And it is not usually as radical as it is believed.

That intimacy doesn't go to the bottom either.

Very few have the courage to reach it without a filter because elements that are very difficult to manipulate are discovered in it.

So the creative propensity for intimacy that exists now seems to me somewhat lazy, silly and childish. And your relationship with the other? I am very interested.

Before, friction with others had prestige: with the equal, with the immigrant, the foreign body, love, the conquest of it... But now it is the permanent denial of any form of friction that dries up the experience.

This is how you get to the geek and the faint-hearted.

I assume the friction because it is even hygienic.

It is not possible to deepen a relationship with the other (be it the other individual, society, or set of different values) if you do not go deep.

There is no need to fear injury.

Nothing that matters happens without consequences.

Only when you reach the abandonment of delivery does the door of innocence open. Why do you think your cinema irritates? Well, I don't know very well, but compared to other types of cinema I think I can say that my films are not cowardly, Neither mediocre nor stupid.

I am not one of the film directors who are interested in what is easy, nor in success.

All of this is poverty.

So what irritates many is not having the courage to risk more.

In this film, for example, there are many challenges.

And none of them is, for me, wondering what the staff will think of this. This phrase is said by a character: "Politics is a disco. It's out of time." It's that politics is a disco and it's out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

but by comparison with other types of cinema I think I can say that my films are not cowardly, mediocre, or stupid.

I am not one of the film directors who are interested in what is easy, nor in success.

All of this is poverty.

So what irritates many is not having the courage to risk more.

In this film, for example, there are many challenges.

And none of them is, for me, wondering what the staff will think of this. This phrase is said by a character: "Politics is a disco. It's out of time." It's that politics is a disco and it's out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

but by comparison with other types of cinema I think I can say that my films are not cowardly, mediocre, or stupid.

I am not one of the film directors who are interested in what is easy, nor in success.

All of this is poverty.

So what irritates many is not having the courage to risk more.

In this film, for example, there are many challenges.

And none of them is, for me, wondering what the staff will think of this. This phrase is said by a character: "Politics is a disco. It's out of time." It's that politics is a disco and it's out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

nor success.

All of this is poverty.

So what irritates many is not having the courage to risk more.

In this film, for example, there are many challenges.

And none of them is, for me, wondering what the staff will think of this. This phrase is said by a character: "Politics is a disco. It's out of time." It's that politics is a disco and it's out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

nor success.

All of this is poverty.

So what irritates many is not having the courage to risk more.

In this film, for example, there are many challenges.

And none of them is, for me, wondering what the staff will think of this. This phrase is said by a character: "Politics is a disco. It's out of time." It's that politics is a disco and it's out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

Is that politics is a disco and is out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

Is that politics is a disco and is out of time.

It pretty much describes the present.

It's a good metaphor for what's happening today.

Is that

It is a film about the perception of reality.

All the distortions and paranoia of today is because there is no honest relationship or understanding between people and politics. Are you interested in politics? No. Nothing? Let's see, what worries me is that certainty that the rich they are more and more and the poor (more numerous year after year) lose resources without end.

There are fewer and fewer possibilities for collective fraternity.

And that means that we will have less and less possibility of fun.

That does worry me. Why did you choose France to live in? Because Spain also leaves a lot to be desired in the appreciation it has for some of its creators.

Although I also recognize that little by little it is changing.

Today living outside your country is not very difficult.

I don't have a feeling of exile, like other artists.

In some cases it seems to me that this only responds to the desire to complain.

It is simply that France is a more open country and suitable for what I do. And now it enters another difficult world, that of the bulls.

How is the documentary you are preparing going? We are starting.

The protagonists are Pablo Aguado and Roca Rey.

And the film focuses on the figure of the bullfighters, on how they live, how they fear, how they suffer.

And in relation to his art.

That is to say: how do they live the extreme responsibility of exposing themselves to death and that for the contemporary world seems to no longer make much sense. Does that make bullfighting interesting? Without a doubt.

As a reality that exists, it is of enormous interest to me.

It is one of the few current issues that accumulates a mystery for the documentary approach.

I intend to serve and do justice to the interesting elements that bullfighting has.

And focused on the human being, on the pain of the bullfighter.

Because I am more interested in what a bullfighter feels, a person, than in what an animal feels... Everything has a limit... Bullfighting is like auteur cinema, the purer it is, the more reason it will have .Do you consider yourself a well-understood filmmaker?You will be more interested in future generations if your aesthetic commitment is serious and ambitious.

And mine is.

They understand me or not.

Listen: I don't rule out the possibility that in 100 years I will be better known than Martin Scorsese.

Do you consider yourself a well-understood filmmaker? You will be more interested in future generations if your aesthetic commitment is serious and ambitious.

And mine is.

They understand me or not.

Listen: I don't rule out the possibility that in 100 years I will be better known than Martin Scorsese.

Do you consider yourself a well-understood filmmaker? You will be more interested in future generations if your aesthetic commitment is serious and ambitious.

And mine is.

They understand me or not.

Listen: I don't rule out the possibility that in 100 years I will be better known than Martin Scorsese.

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