With the onset of cold weather, cultural shelters become more necessary. It’s literal but also a metaphor. This week we covered the Gijón International Film Festival (which ends November 23) and felt like a refuge: alongside Rossy de Palma, Ramón Lluis Bande and Carla Simón. And the more than 80,000 Latin music records, the Gladys Palmera collection, the largest in the world and which Spain wishes to keep in Madrid, will also serve as a refuge. We continue here with other places to take refuge.
a concert
Ultra Sunn (Madrid and Barcelona). Belgium has an excellent tradition of dance music. The so-called “Belgian sound” was born in the roadside bars of the 1940s and their dance floors, before the invention of DJs. This is very well told in an excellent documentary, which I recommend, called The sound of Belgium (2012). Scenes like new beat or EBM will emerge there, which splashed Valencia at the end of the 80s (if you don’t know this story, I recommend the book Cod!, by Luis Costa).
From this tradition is born the Belgian electronic music duo Ultra Sunn, which performs on November 22 in Madrid (Nazca Live) and the next day in Barcelona (LAUT). They practice a Coldwave style with lyrics about bullying or anxiety that become anthems on the dance floors.
Saturday in Pinto (Madrid), I recommend the Santuario festival to continue dancing: with Sisters of Mercy, Front Line Assembly, Linea aspera, Kite or Tempers. Latest entries.
Three recommended books
- ‘Theodoros’ by Mircea Cărtărescu (Impedimenta, transl. Marian Ochoa de Eribe). This great Romanian writer, whose Impedimenta has published more than a dozen works, wrote in Theodoros a novel (more than 600 pages) which aims to cover everything, from creation to final judgment, linking the historical to the fantastic, the real to the phantasmagoric. Piedad Bonnett said of him that he had a “utopian ambition” and a Borgesian ambition. Already in bookstores.
- “Beyond Whiteness” by Jane Lazarre (the periphery, trans. Blanca Gago). From the author of the essential essay on motherhood The maternal knot, This book is subtitled “Memories of a white mother of two black children”, to emphasize the autobiographical perspective of a work written in 1996 and which is still read today with emphasis on persistent racism in the UNITED STATES. Lazarre wrote a prologue to the Spanish edition in which he said: “History burns us like a hot knife.” Already in bookstores.
- ‘Pipas’ by Esther L. Calderón (Los Acesos y Pepitas de Calabaza). This is the first novel of the journalist from Santander who is currently editor of the Uppers portal (she previously worked for El Mundo and EFE), after having published some short stories. We return there on the neighborhood bench, sitting on the backrest, feet on the seat, doing nothing, blowing pipes one afternoon in the 90s. It’s a fiction but it’s also an expedition towards a real past, in the first person. What happened to teen expectations in the 90s? We will meet them in these pages, and at the close of the book. Already in bookstores.
Three recommended films, by Javier Zurro
- “The girls at the station”. The Spanish audiovisual industry has taken a step forward and decided that it is time to talk about abuse and consent. In recent months, several works have coincided which speak of it as To want, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa or My name is Nevenka, by Icíar Bollaín. It is now Juana Macías who speaks about a real and terrible case, that of the abuse of minors in custody. It is based on a real case and features a wonderful cast of young actresses. Moreover, its director Juana Macías and Icíar Bollaín visit us on elDiario.es next Tuesday. during a meeting with members.
- “Timeshare”. I have a weakness for Olivier Assayas and the actor Vincent Macaigne. Their union in the excellent series Irma Vep It blew my mind and in this movie it doesn’t even reach that level, but I love how Assayas found his alter ego to talk about his traumas and fears. Here, those of a writer in the middle of a pandemic with echoes of Rohmer’s cinema.
- “I prefer to condemn myself.” Margarita Ledo is one of the most important non-fiction directors in Spanish cinema in recent years. He was clear with Nation and now he starts again with I prefer to condemn myself a work with all its characteristics that once again addresses topics such as machismo and lack of freedom. Here thanks to the true story of the trial of a shellfish harvester from the Ferrol estuary during the dictatorship, in 1972.
Three projects for the weekend, by Laura G. Higueras
- Estepa Mantecado Museum (Seville). Since supermarkets have been anticipating Christmas for weeks by releasing nougats, Advent calendars and peas, we will also have to open our mouths to the mantecados. It turns out that the former convent of Santa Clara de Estepa can tour the making of these delicious Christmas treats.
- Collection of funeral wagons (Barcelona). And from the spirit of Christmas to a very crazy (and funereal) collection. The Montjüic cemetery houses this museum of funerary carts which has 13 and six accompanying carts, which allow you to understand how our ancestors transported their deceased to the cemetery. The more than 2,000 funerary books that it houses in its library explain the rituals practiced by different civilizations, with a particular emphasis on the Egyptian one. There are guided tours every Saturday.
- “Come from far away” (Madrid). The September 11 attacks left many planes stuck in the air, with nowhere to land. 7,000 passengers ended up on Gander Island, Canada, where locals scrambled to give them food, water and a home to stay in until they could leave. His story is told in the musical Eat from afar which houses the Marquina Theater in Madrid. Very funny and cool, the truth is that a little light in tragedy is very appreciated. And also see the musicians on stage and not hidden in the pit.
Three exhibitions, by Jordi Sabaté
- “From Montmartre to Montparnasse. Catalan artists in Paris, 1889-1914′ (Barcelona). This exhibition, which will be held at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona until March 29, 2025, offers a very extensive pictorial and documentary sample of the work of the Catalan colony in said city at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. There you can admire paintings by established artists such as Picasso, Rusiñol, Casas, Nonell, Anglada Camarassa, Clarà, Casagemas or Sunyer. But also others less known like Eveli Torent, Utrillo, Joan Sala or Gaspar Cassadó. Even some who are completely unknown. It was organized by historians Vinyet Panyella and Eliseu Trenc.
- ’31 women. An exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim’ (Madrid). In 1943, Peggy Guggenheim She organized an exhibition at her New York gallery Art of This Century to demonstrate the power of women’s art, which included thirty-one artists, mostly linked to the surrealist movement and abstraction. This is how he was born Exhibition of 31 women, an exhibition in which artists such as Leonora CarringtonMeret Oppenheim or Dorothea Tanning. From now on, the Recoletos Room of the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid will host the work of these women until January 5, 2025.
- “World Press Photo 2024” (Barcelona). The photographic exhibition World Press Photo 2024 exhibits in Barcelona the most significant photographic works of the past year. He does it at the Center de Cultura Contemporània (CCCB) until December 15. This edition presents a total of 129 photographs, out of the more than 61,000 submitted to the competition worldwide, which address subjects such as the environmental crisis, the international conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine or the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan or Ethiopia. It also emphasizes gender issues and mental illness care.
Three readings
Revenge served cold. The writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature In 2004, Elfriede Jelinek was questioned for the shadow of a possible tax offense of which she was acquitted. Now write about it.
Aid against cloning. A group of actors went to the filming of a series and there they discovered that they were going to be scanned without telling them why. The goal: replicate them to hire fewer people.
Stay in a chapel. to cities we are keen to sacrifice its historical heritage if, in return, more and more tourists arrive, eager to stay in “charming” places. The latest attack on heritage.
Librotea’s recommendations
If you think that what is happening in the United States is a dystopia, Librotea offers you some readings that will make you tremble. On the other hand and to compensate, in addition to looking towards the future, we can read books that make us learn about the past, from the hand of Antony Beevor.
