Completed - ENGLISH, CATALAN - Documentary - 97 minutes
An essay-documentary on the Film Director’s fight to defend their moral rights before the manipulation that the tycoons of the audiovisual world make of their work, altering the aesthetic content of their films.
Year of production : 2005 Director(s) : Carlos BENPAR Writer(s) : Carlos BENPAR, Ferran ALBERICH Cast : Marta BELMONTE, Woody ALLEN, Marco BELLOCCHIO, Richard FLEISCHER, Milos FORMAN, Arthur PENN, Sydney POLLACK, Liv ULLMANN
A cinematic essay defending the Moral Rights of filmmakers against the manipulations films have been subjected to since the very origins of the cinema up to the current domain of the audiovisual world, combining different forms of film language: archive footage, scenes from essential films, and fictional scenes, such as that set in the court of King Philip II, depicting how the monarch cropped a “scope” Titian painting because it would not fit in the place he had reserved for it at the Monastery of El Escorial. It is thus King of Spain became the inventor of the pan-and-scan process that is nowadays altering the aspect ratio of films.The film starts with the reading of the Delphi Declaration by Liv Ulmann and the Barcelona Manifesto by Fred Zinnemann. The interruptions of films shown on tv by commercial advertisements are dealt with in the film following the angry statements of Federico Fellini and an ironical concert-hall example.The extraordinary testimony of John Huston acts as the starting point of a chapter on the colourisation of classic black-and-white films.Likewise evoked in the film is the session at the USA Congress with the interventions of Elliot Silverstein, Milos Forman, Sydney Pollack, Woody Allen and Burt Lancaster.
Country(ies) : SPAIN