Country: Spain
Year: 1979
Duration: 101'
Self-management by the workers of an appliance factory, Numax, in Barcelona between 1977 and 1979. The documentary was commissioned by the Assembly of Numax workers to protest against the owners’ decision to close the factory. “I am particularly attached to this film for various reasons. First of all, it represented my return to cinema after various years and it made me realize, once and for all, just how much this was my true vocation. Secondly, it is a totally atypical militant film: we shot it with just 650,000 pesetas, to which we later added another 200,000, and it marks a break with all the schemas of the genre at the time. There is no off-screen voice and it lacks any type of ham acting or triumphalism. After all, it couldn’t be any other way, since it was a sort of death act of the workers’ movement. Last but not least, it’s one of my films that remained most in the shadows and it’s worth re-evaluating.” (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)