Jose Luis Guerin

José Luis Guerín was born in Barcelona in 1960. Self-taught, and always interested in aesthetics, he began shooting shorts with his Super 8 camera in 1975, later switching to 16mm. The desire to learn from him would also lead him to teaching, since Guerín is a professor of cinematography at the Pompeu Fabra University in his city, and there he has promoted the career of filmmakers with the same sensitivity as his.

1983 marked his debut as a feature film director thanks to Los motivos de Berta , which shows what will be a constant in his filmography, his condition as a very personal author, who undertakes the films he wants, which are born in his inner world, they are not commissioned by third parties. His film, shot in black and white and starring a teenager who lives in a rural town, inevitably invited comparisons with The Spirit of the Beehive , one of the indisputable masterpieces of Spanish cinema. In any case, it was rigorous work, with a leisurely and contemplative pace, which invited us to think, in addition to Víctor Erice , in the cinema of Robert Bresson .. Unfortunately, it would have very little diffusion. The fact that the idea for the film came from the adolescent diaries that Guerín collected is a premonitory of his interest in documentary, although not just any documentary, but rather what has been called fictional documentary.

That his cinema is special, and difficult to analyse, was recognized by Guerín himself in an interview with Dirigido magazine, where he stated: “Criticism can only exist if it is derived from a prior analysis, which is generally not the case. What worries me is when an analysis is ellipsed and criticism is left alone, generally I don’t understand anything, and I think there is both a lack of space and mental laziness in some cases.”

Guerín’s next feature will take seven years to arrive, and like all his films, it would be an appetizing morsel for lovers of the most exquisite cinema. Innisfree was an almost magical film, suggesting a trip to the Irish town where John Ford filmed The Quiet Man . The place today seemed to echo the film ghosts of yesteryear that would still haunt the place.

Another jump in time, seven years ‘again’, and once again we have a creative and ‘ghostly’ documentary, which emerges from the old family films by Gérard Fleury, who disappeared in the 1930s . Shadow Train played with present and past, and the possibility that celluloid reveals long unknown secrets.

Great works take shape slowly, or in other words, Guerín is in no hurry to move quickly. The idea must come up, and then he will get to work. And precisely some works give rise to his next film, from 2001, Under Construction , where he follows the erection of a building in the old Chinatown. With hours and hours of filmed material, and attentive to how construction affects people’s lives, he delivers a risky and beautiful film about everyday life, where he plays at recreating reality with the protagonists of it. The film would win the Goya for best documentary, and the Special Jury Prize at the San Sebastián Festival.

At this time, Guerín’s film category is firmly established. His films are addressed to an “immense minority”, but they welcome it with passion, eagerly awaiting his new work. In the city of Sylvia (2007) also has a documentary air, but of course it has actors. However, the plot that takes place through the streets of Strasbourg, the city of Sylvia, is minimal, barely a few sentences are pronounced, the images of the artist who follows the young woman are enough in an aesthetically beautiful proposal, but which require the committed effort of the viewer. The film would go to the Venice Mostra, and would give rise to another more experimental work, Some Photos in the City of Sylvia and, further prolonging the chain of works, to the recent Guest, where the promotional journey of the film in different festivals around the world gives rise to a look at diverse people, and to reflect once again on the thin, non-existent dividing line between fiction and documentary.