Werkschau Albert Serra im Metropolis Kino in Hamburg!

In the organizer's words:

"A film is a work of art"

In cooperation with Metropolis Kino, the Instituto Cervantes is presenting seven films by the multi-award-winning Spanish director in a retrospective, including his latest film Afternoons of Solitude as the opening film and Hamburg premiere on February 28, 2025 in the presence of Albert Serra.

"For me, the most important aspect of cinema is that it creates fantasies," said Albert Serra in an interview in 2019. "The camera takes the inner connections from reality, from nature, and links them with intentions and design methods. It makes reality more original, more interesting, more energetic. " Albert Serra, who was born in Banyoles in 1975, works as a video artist, theater and film director. For him, a" film is a work of art" and cinema is part of contemporary art. The current retrospective in Hamburg, presented by the Instituto Cervantes in cooperation with Metropolis Kino, provides a comprehensive insight into Albert Serra's cinematic art:

Afternoons of Solitude (Tardes de soledad, Feb. 28, 7pm) is Serra's first documentary film. It follows the matador and star bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey as he prepares, gets dressed in his hotel room, during the fight in the arena and afterwards. In long takes, the camera focuses on the controversial spectacle between man and beast, leaving out the audience on site. Albert Serra documents the spectacle as a solitary fight between the two protagonists, almost like a chamber play. Afternoon of Solitudes was awarded the main prize at the 2024 San Sebastian Film Festival. In Hamburg, the director will present his film in person at the Metropolis Kino on February 28 at 7 pm, followed by a film talk with journalist and program curator Florian Borchmeyer.

The program also includes Albert Serra's debut film Honor of the Knights (1.3., 7 pm), a free adaptation of Don Quixote, shot in his home town and with amateur actors, the black-and-white film The Song of the Birds (2.3., 7 pm), which, inspired by a Catalan Christmas carol, tells the biblical legend of the Magi, and The Story of My Death (3.3., 7 pm) about Giacomo Casanova's journey to the Carpathians, Dracula's homeland. The film was awarded the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2013. Other films being shown include Liberte (4.3., 7pm), which won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 and is about the exile of three freethinkers shortly before the French Revolution, the historical film The Death of Louis XIV (5.3., 7pm) with Jean-Pierre Leaud in the role of the ailing and gradually declining Sun King and Pacification (6.3., 7pm), a thriller shot in Tahiti and set in the shadow of nuclear testing.

In addition to his film work, Serra writes plays and produces various video works, most recently an installation - like his 2018 play at the Volksbühne Berlin and his 2019 film - entitled Liberté at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam. At the invitation of Documenta in 2012, Albert Serra realized The Three Little Pigs, a 101-hour film with Goethe, Hitler and Fassbinder as protagonists. The film was shot in Kassel in fragments that were projected every day during the three-month duration of the art exhibition. The complete work was shown at the Hamburger Kunstverein in 2021, among other venues.