Director Ventura Pons, key figure in Catalan cinema, dies at 78

With the death of Ventura Pons, who died today at the age of 78 in his home in Barcelona due to his home accident, a key figure in Catalan cinema disappears, a director who marked the turn of the century with the regular presence of his films at the Berlinale. (where he participated five years consecutively in the Panorama section), and who put his ability for dialogue into his films, a capacity that he had polished in his first artistic steps in the theater. Director of Anita doesn't miss the train; Ocaña, intermittent portrait, Caresses either Amic/Amat He received, among other awards, the Honorary Gaudí, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts and the National Film Award from the Generalitat. In its farewell to him, the Catalan Film Academy underlined: “One of the most important filmmakers in our country and who has done the most for Catalan and Catalan cinema.”

Bonaventura Pons i Sala was born in 1945 in Barcelona. During the last five years of Franco's regime he became known as a theater director, before jumping into directing with the documentary Ocaña, an intermittent portrait (1978), a look at the Barcelona of the time through José Pérez Ocaña, artist, performer and activist in favor of LGTBI rights. The multiple facets of Ocaña, leading creator of the Barcelona counterculture as well as a fighter against social conventions and sexual repression when the police still detained homosexuals under the umbrella of the social dangerousness law, served Pons as a mirror of their own sexual, intellectual and cultural concerns. The documentary premiered in the section a certain look from the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1985, after the success of the satire The vicar of Olot, Pons founded his production company El Films de la Rambla, which would provide him with artistic flight, while at the same time connecting, and benefiting economically, from the factions most in defense of Catalan culture in Catalan. Thus began a fruitful period in which he linked film after film, in a sort of local Woody Allen (a similarity that was accentuated because both of his titles, usually urban comedies, were distributed by the same company, Lauren Films). In the case of Pons, he maintained the rhythm by adapting the most exciting theatrical works of the moment, by authors such as Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Lluïssa Cunillé, Sergi Belbel or Josep Maria Miró, to whom he knew how to give audiovisual appeal. And also accompanied, in that leap, by several generations of spectacular actresses who with Pons stood out in the cinema after triumphing in the theater.

Thus there were up to 19 films, such as The because of the causes (1994), Actresses (nineteen ninety six), Petting (1997), Amic/Amat (1998), Die (or not) (2000), Anita doesn't miss the train (2000), where he surprisingly paired—and with great results—Rosa Maria Sardà with José Coronado, delicacy of love (2001)—his jump to international filming in English and the closing of his streak in Berlin—, Idiot love (2004), injured animals (2005), The abysmal life (2006) or Barcelona (a map) (2007), his fourth and last candidacy for the Goya. Aware of the power of new technologies, he embraced them: an example is that he was one of the first Spanish filmmakers with his own website. “I made it to make it easier for people to have the things they asked for about my films. When we make a new film, we put photos, a synopsis, press summaries… I update the entry page from my home,” he recalled in 2003.

“I can't complain, because I am one of the four or five directors with an international presence. I have had 700 festivals in my life, 32 retrospectives, and not in small places. It is true that my cinema has traveled around the world in an incredible way, against all odds. And it has had greater international recognition than here,” he told EL PAÍS in an interview in 2014. That same year Pons led an initiative to reopen, like the Texas cinemas, the old Lauren Gràcia movie theater, in his neighborhood of Barcelona. The end of confinement also meant the definitive closure of the legendary venue.

Pons also filmed a handful of interesting documentaries. To the already mentioned Ocaña, an intermittent portrait, sumo The big cat (2002), which achieved an enormous echo thanks to its drawing of another myth, the rumbero Gato Pérez, who died in 1990 at only 40 years old, a musician whom Ángel Fernández-Santos defined in the film's review as a “filtered rock singer.” through arrabalera salsa rhythms”; either Tail, tail, tail (2014), about the Catalan photographer who photographed from gauche divine to the misery of the shanties. In search of that something more, as with the documentary Ignasi M. (2013), the story of Ignasi Millet, a renowned museologist who had to close his company and mortgage his house in the face of the economic crisis, also risked his own possessions: “I believe that you have to fight for the things you believe in. life. The truth is that they tell me if I have gone crazy for filming these movies.” Pons' health became fragile after suffering a stroke in 2013, and his last appearance, where he appeared weakened, was a few days ago at Colita's funeral, although his death was due to an accident. home.

In his penultimate fiction feature, Miss Dali (2017), delved into the life of the sister of the surrealist figure. With his marvelous clairvoyance, Jordi Costa portrayed the filmmaker in his review of this biopic: “After 45 years of career, it is evident that in Ventura Pons there are many possible filmmakers: the one who is reactivated here is the one who already manifested himself in the extraordinary A snack in Geneva (2013). That is, the Pons who could have been an excellent drama director for the BBC.”