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Hey Maria, do you know I was in the cinema at the weekends?
Were you?
Yeah, the guy peed in the cinema room
and then 20 minutes later the police came and took him away
Never
Oh you know, I didn't know if it was an avant-garde movie critique
or just a guy peeing in the cinema, it was weird
I didn't know a cinema could be so hard and real
hahaha
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Why shining?
I don't know, it could be bad camera lighting
or perhaps I have Lyme disease, like that JFK fella
I better check it out I think
Well anyway, today we're going to see an exhibition, aren't we?
We are, art and cinema
Are you excited?
I'm very much excited
Me too
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Like a cow, looking at its reflection in America for the first time
Cinema has helped man discover who he or she is
Maria
Not the cow
Not the cow, where were we?
We were just in La Caixa, you can see it behind us
for an exhibition celebrating 120 years of art and cinema
Your hot take, did you like it?
I quite liked it, to be honest, yeah
Okay, fantastic
Why?
Because we have some time to kill
Well, for starters I thought they would have pointed to it
which is quite important, we've seen lots of things
that didn't really have much behind
That is true actually
Actually the last exhibition we saw there was Ramon Casas
which had some good and bad parts to it
but this definitely is an exhibition that had the strongest link
between the two different elements of the exhibition
So your favorite period was my favorite period
which never happens, we have nothing in common
It was like from the birth of cinema up until the 1920s, 1930s
and then after the 40s and 50s it kind of tailed off
So we started by describing what we saw in the early part of the exhibition
How could you characterize cinema in the first part?
Well, surrealism
Okay surrealism, I was going to say it was daring
Daring is a good word, I was going to say daring
I talked to you that word in the elevator down
and she got it and stole it on me
but daring is a great word for it, why would you say daring?
Well, I think it just showed things in society
and it analyzed different parts of society
and kind of made a critique of the main characteristics of classes at the time
I think so, I think we've spoken about it on the podcast before
in our previous video, we used to see a clip here or here
a little insert, we did Chaplin and Keaton
kind of playing around with social conventions
primarily to cut the camera there
play with social conventions and the class like you mentioned
but I didn't think that was the biggest dimension of the first half of the exhibition
but it's okay, it's a democracy, we can disagree
we can give you the main part
Okay, well
Yeah, it was, it was, it was daring
I didn't think it was so focused on classes
I think it was just visually daring
I mean there's a great part where Chaplin is sucked through a machine in modern times
which I believe is from 1936
and just to do it, I don't know if that was dangerous for him to do
but him and Keaton in general in the stunts that they pulled off
just for the visual flair
I know that they put themselves in a lot of precarious situations
and dangerous situations at different points in different movies
so that was kind of why it was for me
but a lot of transitions at a famous Spanish movie
you could pronounce it better than I can
El Shin
El Perro
El Perro
Analus
Exactly
And the famous transition where the moon is in the sky
and the clouds are going past and then he cuts a girl's eye
so we saw a lot of that
my theory is that we had this focus on surreal images
because obviously at the start of cinema there wasn't any sound
there wasn't any audio
so people had to use imagery to tell the story
and either you're two, you're two kind of aspects of that either physical comedy
which he had Buster Keaton, Chaplin
we even saw a skit where people were literally cube figures
so it was kind of poking fun at cubism
and this couple couldn't kiss each other
the wife afterwards couldn't clean properly
because obviously it's not a very natural human form
and she couldn't go around and do different things at her duties
and then also you have aspects where it's very surreal
because there's no other way to tell a story I think
without it being surreal
and you have such a strong emphasis
and such a strong need for the images to tell a story
that's why you have all these kind of mad things happening in the different movies
that we saw there
I think it's also there because it's the beginning of cinema as an art form
It's purely visual, it seems like it's a real celebration
they're really trying as many things as possible
and it looks for the most part good
it still stands up to scrutiny
today I think the modern eyes
Well certainly it's a far better than...
Well exactly, yeah
So it was right against it
you found very satisfying in the exhibition
or something that you really enjoy looking at
Well I just like all the extras from the films
like having them display whatever you looked
Oh like the scenes, the different scenes
Yeah, I think that was really nice as well
I also like the movie posters
Do you remember the movie posters?
I think the movie posters were fantastic
because these were from the 30s
and they reminded me of movie posters from the 80s
and basically there's one like it was called the train
the fast train of love translated kind of roughly from French
it had a speeding train done up in a graphic
and like the edges kind of going that way
because it was moving so fast your eye couldn't
basically take in all that was happening
and it reminded me of the movies from the 80s
because you had a lot of these animations
and even from the 60s
and we went to another exhibition a long time ago
about how Spanish artists created movie posters
for Hollywood
and when you, especially effects aren't so good
they don't match the vision and the dream
you have these graphics and painted posters
because you can't rely on the actual film image
to conjure up what you want to conjure
and it was fascinating
and also you can see that with video games
from the 80s and 90s
these fantastic designs when you play them
just pong, you know, it's very low key
but now obviously technology is cut up in every sense
in movies and in video games and everything else
so you don't have to have that reliance on graphics
on the posters
so it's kind of interesting how you have these little things
coming back very cyclical, you know
in the representation of the movies
because of the need, you know, it advances
but there are further limitations
so there's technical limitations in the 20s
technical limitations in the 80s, for example
so it never changes
and there's Picasso there as well
you didn't quite like that Picasso one, no?
Well, I just thought because he said
the main reason for having that movie
or taking part in a movie that was already being filmed
was to kind of obscure his persona
and make himself more mysterious to people
Yeah, exactly
which I think he was a very modern artist
in that sense because he knew what his own myth was
and he was well-capable about using modern techniques
to obscure it
which, well, I don't really like it, it's a bit selfish, you know
it's not as if...
Yeah
It's at odds with the other artists
who are really keen to use this vision reading
in association with their other works
like tableaus, collages, sculptures
and their paintings as well
I think that's why it was a turning point in the exhibition
but then on it sort of changed because he was more focused
on the person while all the way until then
he was more focused on, you know
showing the world, showing different aspects
of vaccines and a lot of people
rather than, you know, turning it back to the artist
Well, moving on to the second part of the exhibition
because that's what we're going to talk about now
because she has to get her car run the clock a little bit
you know, she's parked in a non-parking zone
in front of a hospital
at a fire hydrant
Not really
Well, for example, there's a famous movie
Brettless
which everybody has heard of
and I think it's interesting in some respects
from the 50s and 60s, those kinds of surreal movies
because this movie in particular was aping American culture
and as I mentioned to you earlier, there's a famous scene
in Goodfellas, which is Martin Scorsese's classic
from 1990 where Joe Pesci's character
is shooting the screen
which is a reference to an earlier film
where I think it's while Bill is shooting the screen as well
so it just shows how cinema always references itself
and how all culture is basically feeding off what's come before
even if it's diverging into a new path
even if it's surreal or abstract
or even kind of more commercial or whatever
but I think we both found that second half less satisfying
because in the 20s and 30s
the surrealism in the cinema really reflected a movement I think
but in the 50s and 60s afterwards
that movement still existed but I think other parts of society
and other parts of art and culture had moved on
and that part of cinema maybe had been left behind a little bit
Yeah, I think that's right, it wasn't as new and as daring
I knew in the 80s, that's the word of the week
and I missed the memory, you know?
60s was during the boys' own movies, The Great Escape
then you had the train of television in the 50s
you had Bible Epics
where was the Spanish Bible Epics like Moses or
I was going to say Hamlet but he's not a Bible Epic
it's a Shakespearean character
so it was interesting and definitely one of our most
enjoyable exhibition tours lately, don't you think?
Okay, so if you want to find out more culture, check out Alarpa.net
for a one on Twitter
Maria, we're not doing the bike video
and that's over
