Country: Spain
Year: 1990
Duration: 101'
A documentary about Jacinto Esteva Grewe, one of the prime exponents of the School of Barcelona, the director of Lejos de los árboles co-director of Dante no es únicamente severo and a good friend of Jordá’s. “Darìa Esteva, the daughter of the director, does nothing more than bring back her father, Jacinto, from the land of the dead. In searching for a narrative scheme for the film, I based myself on the basic elements of Greek tragedy: the narrators and other elements of the screenplay come from it. I’m surprised that this went almost unnoticed. What bothered me, once we had completed the editing, was that the structure seemed too obvious, but I was wrong. Darìa wanted me to edit the images of Jacinto, but it seemed so necrophilious that I refused to. I suggested something else: to bring her father back to life we didn’t have to work on the inert material, all we had to do was what he always wanted more than anything else: to not be forgotten. The film is decidedly necrophilious, but the intention was the exact opposite: to bring Jacinto back on the scene.” (J. Jordá)
Biography
film director
Joaquín Jordá
Joaquín Jordá (Santa Coloma de Farnès, Spain, 1935 - Barcelona, 2006) began studying law in 1951. The next year he abandoned his studies and became secretly involved in the PSUC (Pardido Socialista Unificado de Catalunya), the Catalonian branch of the Spanish Communist Party. In 1956 he got married and moved to Madrid to study cinema. Four years later he shot his first short film, Día de los muertos (1960), in collaboration with Juliàn Marcos. Over the next 6 years he divided his time between Madrid and Barcelona, fathered two children and separated from his wife. In 1967 he and his friend Jacinto Esteva Grewe co-directed the film Dante no es únicamente severo, which was heralded as the manifesto of the future “School of Barcelona.” He moved to Italy after various projects of his failed, including the adaptation of Un lloc entre els morts by the author María Aurèlia Capmany, with whom he short an introductory documentary entitled María Aurèlia Capmany parla de “Un lloc entre els morts” (1969). He dedicated himself to militant cinema and political activity for 4 years in Italy, working for PCI (Italian Comunist Party). In 1973 he moved back to Barcelona, where he began working as a translator and in 1979 he directed his next film, Numax presenta..., a militant movie about the selfmanagement of a factory in Barcelona. He moved back to Madrid in 1983 and became famous as a screenwriter, working primarily with his friend Vicente Aranda. 1990 marked his return to cinema: Dària Esteva commissioned a film about her father – Jacinto Esteva Grewe – which is entitled El encargo del cazador. During the early 1990s he alternated his activity as a screenwriter in Madrid with teaching activity at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and in 1996 he directed Un cos al bosc. In June 1997 he suffered a cerebral stroke, causing agnosia and permanent alexia. He settled down in Barcelona and began a new phase of his life, dedicated to the creation of unclassifiable documentary films: Monos como Becky (1999), De nens (2003), Veinte años no es nada (2004). In mid-2005, after the shooting of Literaturas de l’exili, he was diagnosed with cancer, but Jordá didn’t allow himself to become discouraged. He continued to work and completed two films, Ictus and Descontrol urbano. On June 24th, after completing the editing of Más allá del espejo, Jordá died in Barcelona. A few days later, the Spanish Ministry of Culture conferred on him the national cinematography award.
FILMOGRAFIA
Día de los muertos (co-regia/co-director Julián Marcos, cm, doc., 1961), Dante no es únicamente severo (co-regia/co-director Jacinto Esteva Grewe, 1967), María Aurèlia Capmany parla de Un lloc entre els morts (mm, doc., 1969), Portogallo, paese tranquillo (mm, doc., 1969), Il perché del dissenso (cm, doc., 1969), I tupamaros ci parlano (doc., 1969), Lenin vivo (mm, doc., 1970), Spezziamo le catene (co-regia/co-director Ivo Barnabó Micheli, 1971), Numax presenta… (doc., 1979), El encargo del cazador (doc., 1990), Un cos al bosc (1996), Monos como Becky (doc., 1999), De nens (2003), Veinte años no es nada (doc., 2004), Literaturas de l’exili (doc., 2005), Ictus (cm, doc., 2005), Descontrol urbano (cm, doc., 2006), Más allá del espejo (doc., 2006)