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| José Val del Omar; On the life, cinematic advances, and films of one of Spain's greatest directors | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 28 2014, 04:39 AM (558 Views) | |
| brian d | Mar 28 2014, 04:39 AM Post #1 |
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![]() José Val del Omar was born in 1904 in Granada, and died in 1982 in Madrid. He is credited on IMDb as the director of 7 films, 6 of them documentary shorts, which shows the injustice that history has done to this very significant filmmaker. In his life, he made an unknown number of films, most of which were either destroyed by him or have been lost. (The story goes that the great Spanish poet and Nobel laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez took many of these films with him to New York or Puerto Rico when he was exiled following the Civil War, and that they were subsequently misplaced in one of the two places.) He also created around a dozen advances in cinematographic technology, such as the precursor to surround sound, variable angle lenses, and bi-standard film. Taken together with these technological innovations, Val del Omar’s filmic output is unparalleled in Spain, and nearly anywhere in the world. One would have to go back to the Lumières to find a filmmaker who created such a level of innovation in film without clear precursor. Anything about his films or inventions, including general thoughts on his works, is welcome below. |
| I will talk breathlessly about Spanish and Portuguese cinema, João César Monteiro, Ritwik Ghatak, and Jacques Rivette, and hardly ever about anything else. | |
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| brian d | Mar 29 2014, 01:27 AM Post #2 |
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Some written resources: His website is available in English as well as Spanish: http://www.valdelomar.com/home.php?lang=en It includes information about his films and also about his cinema inventions. It has been under construction for a few years now, and I'm not sure how often it gets updated, or even who is working on it. The best part is probably the section of his own writings on cinema. An exhibit at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid from a few years ago: http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/val-omar-overflow Not much information but you can see the brochures for the exhibit on a link to the right of the page. They also published a book about his works that I'm trying to track down. http://www.dokument-festival.com/program/sections/translucent-beings-jose-val-del-omar_5472 This is also minimal, but was made for a presentation of his works for a documentary festival in Switzerland, also in 2011. There's a bit more information about each of his surviving films. http://www.academia.edu/5685444/RESISTANCE_THROUGH_ALLEGORY_-_Coded_narratives_in_the_cinema_of_Jose_Val_del_Omar_Victor_Erice_and_Jaime_Chavarri I haven't read through this yet, but it's an article that compares Val del Omar to Erice and Chávarri, with pictures to help anyone who hasn't seen the films in question. (Don't try downloading it unless you want to deal with a whole bunch of annoying steps.) http://www.reelsuspects.com/1980/11/jose-val-del-omar-collection/ A bit more information about an exhibit, with the article in English and the video at the bottom in Spanish. A Spanish article about Val del Omar as the forgotten surrealist: http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20100826/53989214297/val-del-omar-el-surrealista-olvidado.html |
| I will talk breathlessly about Spanish and Portuguese cinema, João César Monteiro, Ritwik Ghatak, and Jacques Rivette, and hardly ever about anything else. | |
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| brian d | Mar 29 2014, 02:12 AM Post #3 |
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Here are some links for his Tríptico elemental de España. This was his masterpiece. It's a three-part evocation of Spain through an exploration of its geographic and elemental forms. The three extant pieces link three regions of Spain with three of the classic elements (Granada=Water, Castilla=Fire, Galicia=Earth), with the intent of a fourth film linking Madrid to Air. He never completed the sound for Acariño Galaico, or the filming for this fourth segment. Aguaespejo granadino (1955) Fuego en Castilla (1960) Acariño galaico (1961) This one has bad video and sound quality. Unfortunately both are very important, but would probably matter more if you saw it in a theater set up for his films. I'll get around to putting up some more information about the three parts, hopefully soon. (And I definitely want to put up information about his technological developments.) |
| I will talk breathlessly about Spanish and Portuguese cinema, João César Monteiro, Ritwik Ghatak, and Jacques Rivette, and hardly ever about anything else. | |
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| brian d | Aug 23 2016, 04:52 AM Post #4 |
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In light of the discussion (or at least listing) of experimental films, I thought it would be good to see some of Val del Omar's inventions, and maybe drum up some interest in his films for those who don't know them. In his life, Val del Omar held patents on dozens of cinematic inventions, most of which were concerned with reworking filmic language in terms of the relationship between spectator and image. Some of them are: Bi-Standard Film Val del Omar invented Bi-Standard film stock in 1957, as a way of saving blank space on the film by capturing on the film stock two different sets of images, one to be played in one direction and the other in the opposite direction. A picture: ![]() This worked with existing projectors. The film to the left is VBO Bi-Standard 35; the one to the right is traditional 35mm. You can see how half of the images on the left are upside-down, so that when the stock is played in reverse the upside-down set of images would be presented right-side-up. Apanoramic Overflow Apanoramic Overflow was the idea of projecting the film significantly beyond the screen in front of the spectator, so that it overflowed onto the walls, ceiling, and the spectators themselves. In doing so, the spectator would see the film in contrast to whatever the filmmaker could imagine, given that the spectators would move, distorting the projected image. ![]() The inside box is the traditional screen; the outside box marks the edges of the projected image. This would require film stock that was wider and taller than traditional film stock. Bi-Standard film could be used to project in this format. TactilVision This is probably the most complicated of his inventions, both technically and in trying to describe it. TactilVision is an attempt to utilize light and the way that it is captured by the eye to force the brain to see images as three-dimensional and not flat. The combination of the movement of the camera, a strobe-like effect created by artificial light, and the eye's reception of light waves gives both texture and movement to images that would normally appear to exist in two-dimensions. Here is one of the camera set-ups from Fire in Castilla: ![]() Diaphonic Sound Diaphonic sound is a precursor to surround sound. During the projection of the film, the spectator would hear sounds coming from both in front and behind. The sounds that came from in front of the spectator were intended to match with the images being projected, and the spectator would respond to them intellectually. The sounds coming from the back were to appeal to the senses, or the unconscious part of the brain. He experimented as well with screens that were textured, to work in conjunction with the projected image, different types of lenses that would capture the image in distortion, projection that would illuminate different random colors during the projection (he felt that color films were too constraining, given that they fix the specific colors associated with certain images), etc. The overall project he created was referred to as PLAT, or Picto-Lumínico-Audio-Táctil, something like a Gesamtkunstwerk in film. The three films in his Elementary Triptych of Spain are probably the clearest way of seeing and hearing how he integrated his technological developments, as well as his late short film Variations on a Pomegranate. A lot of his writings are fascinating in terms of how he integrated scientific knowledge of psychology and theories of vision into his own theories. Jean Epstein is the only other filmmaker I know whose writings are similarly poetic and scientific, and attempt to work through not just how to film, but how to respond to the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind. The above images come from http://valdelomar.com, which has English translations of a lot of the information. (Sound plays when you enter the site, so turn down your speakers if you're concerned.) Edited by brian d, Aug 23 2016, 04:58 AM.
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| I will talk breathlessly about Spanish and Portuguese cinema, João César Monteiro, Ritwik Ghatak, and Jacques Rivette, and hardly ever about anything else. | |
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| uglyswan | Aug 23 2016, 05:31 AM Post #5 |
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Thanks for all the info on his inventions, i didn't know anything about that and it's quite amazing Val de Omar was presented in an early visual communication class that was given by a spanish teacher, particularly to me because the class itself mentioned little about cinema I fell in love with his work immediately, and i think Fuego en Castilla is one of cinema's greatest achievements, reflecting emotion in statues and architecture through the angles and use of light. Also incredible to note it's the way it reflects his feelings towards his country and the regime that was taking part in it. Talks about a España rota without saying a word, just mesmerizing to me. Although i don't know how popular he was during the Franco regime, i'd like to say his work is getting more and more recognized, i think Fuego En Castilla was uploaded to a fairly popular spanish speaking streaming site, and it made me very happy to see that. on top of that, there are a lot of people getting into experimental film making who are recommended Val de Omar and most of the time they love it, so as i said i'm very happy this recognition is happening. in my opinion, his use of religious figures reminds of byzantine icons and art, though obviously with a different meaning in mind and thanks for all the video links, will go through that again, very worth it and i haven't watched aguaespejo granadino in quite a while ![]() ]hope this topic really takes off! Edited by uglyswan, Aug 23 2016, 05:32 AM.
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"The midnight skies Light this face – and out of dark of night, One thing alone grows darker – our eyes." | |
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| brian d | Aug 23 2016, 01:18 PM Post #6 |
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I get the sense that during the Franco period he was pretty easy to ignore, given that his films aren't really made for a majority of the population. He was associated with the Spanish Republicans, though, and one of his big pre-Civil War projects was his involvement with the Pedagogic Missions (along with Federico García Lorca and Rafael Dieste, among others). His early films Fiestas cristianas/Fiestas profanas were made for the Pedagogic Missions. He would travel with the others throughout Spain to underdeveloped areas that requested the missions. They would put on cultural productions, show films that featured celebrations and folkloric aspects of other regions of the country, give courses that were of practical use to the inhabitants of the towns, give instruction to teachers, and generally attempt to further develop some of the poorer parts of the country. It was a very interesting program that was associated with the Second Republic, and it's a shame it died off with the Civil War. |
| I will talk breathlessly about Spanish and Portuguese cinema, João César Monteiro, Ritwik Ghatak, and Jacques Rivette, and hardly ever about anything else. | |
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