Country: Sweden
Year: 1979
Duration: 61'
The documentary Arrabal was selected for Swedish television and won the Prix Italia in 1981. The film paints a portrait of the Spanish novelist, playwright, and artist Fernando Arrabal, starting from the scandal provoked in 1971 by his play The Tower of Babel, which was censured for obscenities by the Malmö Municipal Theatre. This portrait of his is painted with words of the actors and collaborators working on other productions of his play (including Maria Schell); with the interview to Núria Espert (protagonist of Arrabal’s most famous film Long Live Death), and with the illustrious writer Eugène Ionesco (who places Arrabal’s work in the wake of the Theatre of the Absurd); but also with archive footage and the conversations with Arrabal himself (who, at the time of the movie, was in full creative swing). What emerges from this painting is the portrait of a complex character, a wide-ranging artist, a cosmopolitan constantly exiled from his homeland (especially after being condemned under fascist law for “disrespectful language against the State and God”), yet firmly attached to his origins in the heart of Spain.
Biography
film director
Humberto Lopez Y Guerra
Humberto Lopez y Guerra (Matanzas, Cuba, 1945) started working in the early 1960s, creating and directing documentaries for the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinema. After graduating from the Babelsberg Film School in Germany, he returned to Cuba to direct Juventud 67 (1967), and in 1968 he definitively moved to Sweden. In 1976, he started his collaboration with Swedish television, making a series of successful documentaries, starting with the film Federico García Lorca: Murder in Granada, and including titles like Arrabal, the documentary on the Cuban revolutionary Huber Matos entitled Det Långa Straffet (1981), and Ondskans år (1987), on Nazism in Sweden during World War 2 and winner of the 1989 Nordvision Award for the best TV series in the Nordic countries.
FILMOGRAFIA
Carlos (cm, doc., 1966), Juventud 67 (1967), Choose Your Hero (doc., 1969), Federico García Lorca: Murder in Granada (tv, doc., 1976), Arrabal (tv, doc., 1978), Det långa straffet (tv, doc., 1980), Ondskans år (tv, doc., 1987), Daghemmet Lyckan (tv, doc., 1987), Castro’s Cuba (tv, doc., 1989).
Cast
& Credits
regia/director
Humberto Lopez Y Guerra
sceneggiatura/screenplay Christina Lopez Y Guerra
fotografia/cinematography Ramon Suarez, Ken Legargeant
suono/sound Yves Zlotnica
interpreti/cast Fernando Arrabal, Eugène Ionesco, Núria Espert, Herbert Fische, Maria Schell, Luce Arrabal, Mari Carmen Arrabal, Jorge Lavelli, Goran Bengtson (voce/narrator)
produzione/production Sveriges Television
sceneggiatura/screenplay Christina Lopez Y Guerra
fotografia/cinematography Ramon Suarez, Ken Legargeant
suono/sound Yves Zlotnica
interpreti/cast Fernando Arrabal, Eugène Ionesco, Núria Espert, Herbert Fische, Maria Schell, Luce Arrabal, Mari Carmen Arrabal, Jorge Lavelli, Goran Bengtson (voce/narrator)
produzione/production Sveriges Television
