It was hard not to feel a chill with the first bars of The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), the beginning of a day for posterity that took place on Sunday, March 23 in Terres de l’Ebre, between Ulldecona and La Ràpita. Béla Tarr, D’A Honorary Award 2025, assisted with the help of filmmaker Manel Raga, a former student of the short-lived but already legendary film school Film Factory, which the Hungarian director founded in 2012 and through which other filmmakers from our country also passed, such as Pilar Palomero or Anna Fernandez de Paco.
The first part of the day took place in the beautiful Ermita de la Pietat in Ulldecona, whose balcony offers a vast and beautiful perspective, always missed by the unaccustomed retinas of urban short-termism. Inside, the congregation that filled the church quickly fell silent when the spotlight of the projector was turned on to make way for Jeanne and her film, a work that was not restored to its original format until 1981. The devotion with which Dreyer portrays Maria Falconetti’s face, and that of the actress in the role of the martyr, was not so far from our outpouring contemplating the holy shroud in front of the altar, tinged with lights and shadows that almost a hundred years after being filmed continue to be avant-garde and moving. The Passion of Joan of Arc, overcoming all distances, is also that of the Danish director and his compositions. How else would he decide that a shot does not always have to have the center as its neuralgic point? How else could the apparent neatness of the sets and their immaculate lighting convey that degree of inhumanity and putrefaction?
Fotos: ⓒ Sarah Pérez
Like the film itself, the session at the hermitage in Ulldecona was full of symbolism, starting with the day and time, those of a Sunday mass. Béla Tarr had already predicted it in the previous presentation: what we would see was the condemnation of a woman perpetrated by everything that the walls that welcomed us represented. Outside, exceptionally, it was not raining. Because the storm was inside. The roar of the circulating celluloid, emphasized by the divine echoes of the sanctuary, were like hearing heavy rain. And there was no roof, umbrella or inquisition that could stop the downpour of guilt and shame that the film recounts. Things change, fortunately, and this session was an empirical and exciting confirmation of this. They do it little by little, but they change, and trying to contain them is impossible. The light that invaded the place was also uncontrollable without even abusing the projector light. It came from a small window, very high, unreachable. And from there, precisely, a ray of direct light entered and stained the screen just at the moment when the obtuse ones decide to torture Jeanne. The rest is history.
Almost two hours after it began, that ritual, naturally pagan but deeply religious, came to an end and it was time to indulge in other, very different pleasures. A sin, some would say, because after hunger comes the gluttony, it was time for lunch and we had a magnificent paella with local rice in front of us.
The afternoon was coming and we were dangerously satisfied. After eating and drinking generously, it was time for a screening of Damnation (Béla Tarr, 1988), at La Ràpita, hosted by the local film society. It is no secret that the Hungarian master’s cinema is insubordinate to the rhythms and nervous tics of our society, but the enthusiasm did not wane during the two hours of screening, fueled by the magnitude of the images and sound and by the imminent conversation with the protagonist of the day. Damnation was more like a blessing. The long takes that make up that desolate symphony have a richness as palpable as it lacks bombast, and they manage to configure a dark and singular universe, which you can almost smell and which seems to come from a parallel dimension. They are distant, random and curiously fantastic references, but the sensations afterwards transported me to those of films such as Hard to Be a God, by Aleksey German; Earwig, by Lucile Hadzihalilovic; Stalker, by Tarkovsky; or the early David Lynch films. At the end of the session, the conversation, and at the end of the conversation, the observation of a spectator, between admiring and presumptuous, stating that Tarr films bars and animals like no one else —very much in agreement— and asking the director about his creative process. A question that the director answered with another question: “can you cook? Well, that’s it; I do what I can with the ingredients I have”. God forbid, what a tasting menu. From our side, bon appétit.
– Tariq Porter
Fotos: ⓒ Sarah Pérez
