With the most judicious selection and editing of clips from the films of Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice, co-directors Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin – creating a potent audiovisual essay for Sight & Sound magazine – distill the essence of Erice’s masterful filmmaking in Spirit of the Beehive (1973), El Sur (1983) and Dream of Light (1992). They open the short documentary with a quote from the director in which he speaks of, “those primordial stories we hold in our memories….” That’s a perfect gateway into a discussion of what he does, how he does it, and the powerful effect on the viewer. His sublime craftsmanship, the heavy lifting that goes into the end-result delicacy of his films, taps into something primordial and primal, the stuff that animates our dreamscape.
Still from Spirit of the Beehive.
Erice’s knowledge of the ways the visuals he presents onscreen can tap into our unconscious and not only deepen the “narrative” being spun before us but also unfold deeper stories within us means the “painterly” and “poetic” filmmaker is an astute psychologist as well. (His mode of filmmaking is far outside the realm of conventional narrative and is closer to a stream-of-consciousness soaked in beauty.) A student of law, political science and economics before turning to filmmaking, Erice has a muse that straddles interests and disciplines. Time and the meaning of it is a pressing artistic concern, and childhood is a big subject for him (images of them fill this short). His filmography consists of a mere two short films and three features (one being the award-winning documentary Dream of Life) in almost four decades of filmmaking, with roughly ten years between films. López and Martin not only manage to do him justice in their brief appreciation, they make the viewer want to revisit (or visit for the first time) the work of this cinematic genius.
Top image courtesy Usoz
