Guerín Debuts Films in U.S.

Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive (HFA), described Catalan director José Luis Guerín’s films, presented Feb. 9-11 at the Carpenter Center, as “an attempt to return to the fundamental properties of cinema.” Well-known abroad, but not in America, Guerín blends fact and fiction in movies that not only challenge the viewer’s conception of reality and truth, but also his conception of a movie itself.

Guerín screened his films in person as a part of the HFA’s “Ibero-American cinema” series, which began last year. A non-fiction filmmaker and professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Guerín is one of the most significant figures in Catalan cinema today.

Guerín’s films can be described as “environment documentaries,” which capture a character, his surroundings, and the tension that exists between the two. “En la ciudad de Sylvia,” the first movie presented, is composed of the rich sights and sounds of the title character’s city.

Guerín filmed the city’s inhabitants, as opposed to filling it with hundreds of “extras.” He noted that maybe only a quarter of the film was the result of his intervention. For nearly an hour and a half, the camera follows a man who searches for a woman named Sylvia, whom he saw in the city six years ago.

“All men, including those happily married with children, [remember] the day in which [they] saw an unknown woman crossing the street,” Guerín said in the question and answer session after the screening. He could be “a painter, maybe a poet, maybe a filmmaker.”

“Sylvia” is filled with such uncertainties, perhaps because it is almost devoid of dialogue. The film’s lack of clear storyline also leaves it open to interpretation. Even the purpose and importance of dialogue itself is open to question, as well as other aspects of the film.

The title of the film, “En la ciudad de Sylvia” (“In the City of Sylvia”), suggests that “Sylvia” is not the main subject; the man’s presence in the city matters more. Guerín used the word “flâneur,” a term used to describe a “stroller” or a person who observes the city, to characterize the man and woman’s experience. The term could also apply to the entire film.

After “Sylvia,” Guerín screened “Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia,” a succession of black-and-white still photographs and text reminiscent of silent films from the twenties. The photographs represent Guerín’s observations of women in an urban setting and offer different points of view on Guerín’s vision of a city and its female inhabitants.

Guerín’s other feature films, “Innisfree,” “En Construccion,” and “Tren de Sombras,” were also screened over the three days.

According to Guerín, the focus of his films “is the space...[the] look of the filmmaker, the look of the spectator...In modern cinema, the space of the spectator is bigger.” In “Sylvia,” he concentrates on the conflict between a man and his surroundings. In every film, there is a tension between the fiction and the documentary. It is “abstract...but its intention is reality,” he said.

Movie-goers accustomed to detangling “complicated plots” and looking for “psychological information” would have difficulty with Guerín’s work. He reluctantly spoke with the audience but declined to comment extensively on the meaning of his films. Instead, he asks his audience to simply “watch [and] listen.”

—Staff writer Alina Voronov can be reached at avoronov@fas.harvard.edu.