The Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Generalitat de Catalunya will celebrate the centenary of filmmaker Pere Portabella with joint programming
Joint press release from the Ministry of Culture and the Generalitat de Catalunya:
- https://www.cultura.gob.es/actualidad/2025/01/250123-centenario-pere-portabella.html
- https://govern.cat/salapremsa/notes-premsa/674822/generalitat-catalunya-ministeri-cultura-celebraran-centenari-del-cineasta-pere-portabella-programacio-conjunta
23/01/2025
- Portabella, who was recently awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts 2024, is the director, screenwriter and producer of important films such as Buñuel’s ‘Viridiana’.
- For the design of the activities, which will take place between 2026 and 2027, Jordi Balló Fantova, university professor, film producer and cultural manager, has been appointed as curator.
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The Ministry of Culture and the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya will work together to prepare the commemoration of the centenary of the filmmaker Pere Portabella (Figueres, 1927). The initiative aims to highlight the figure of this director and his legacy in filmmakers who have been influenced by his work.
In order to prepare the activities for the anniversary, the curatorship has been entrusted to Jordi Balló Fantova (Figueres, 1954), university professor, film producer and cultural manager. “This celebration must extend the vital and artistic message of Pere Portabella: the impetus for dialogue, for courage, for the centrality of the avant-garde, with its proverbial capacity to create movement and succession,” Balló pointed out.
Balló, a doctor in Audiovisual Communication from Pompeu Fabra University, is the academic director of the Master’s in Documentary Creation at Pompeu Fabra University. In recognition of the documentary initiatives that emerged from this program, he received the 2005 National Culture Award from the Generalitat de Catalunya in the ‘Cinema’ category. In 2011, he was awarded the Ciutat de Barcelona Audiovisual Award for his work as curator of the exhibition ‘Totes les cartes. Correspondències fílmiques’. He has also been the exhibition director of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and artistic director of the Barcelona Film Festival. Among others, he has produced the documentaries ‘Buñuel’, ‘Les variacions Gould’, and ‘Granados y Delgado, un crimen legal’. And among his publications, the essays ‘La llavor immortal’, ‘Jo ja he estados aquí’ and ‘El món, un escenari’, together with Xavier Pérez, stand out; as well as his work ‘Imatges del silenci’.
The curator, in collaboration with the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) of the Ministry of Culture and the Catalan Institute of Cultural Enterprises (ICEC) of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia, will be responsible for developing a proposal for centenary activities – including exhibitions, shows or meetings – with the aim of them being developed throughout 2026 and 2027. For its implementation, the collaboration of cultural institutions such as the Academia de Cine, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Filmoteca Española or the Filmoteca de Catalunya, among others, is planned.
About Pere Portabella
Pere Portabella (Figueres, 1927) is a director, screenwriter and producer. Since his beginnings as a filmmaker he has owned the production company Films 59, with which he has produced all his films and those of such important Spanish filmmakers as Carlos Saura in ‘Los golfos’ (1959), Marco Ferreri in ‘El cochecito’ (1960) or Luis Buñuel in ‘Viridiana’ (1961), which received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
As a director, Portabella made his debut with the film ‘No compteu amb els dits’ in 1967, which had a script by the Catalan poet and artist Joan Brossa. In 1999 he was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi by the Generalitat de Catalunya. With the documentary ‘Mudanza’, a commission from the Huerta de San Vicente to pay tribute to the poet Federico García Lorca, he won the National Film Award of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2009. In 2012 the Catalan Film Academy awarded him the Gaudí d’Honor in recognition of his career. Recently, he has been distinguished by the Ministry of Culture with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts 2024.