"What's the secret to living 100 years? Drink a beer every day! Or a glass of cava, they say." This is how a woman who appears to be 102 years old —who doesn't look it, by the way— responds to the questions of two curious girls, Yanira and Séfora, from the Gràcia neighborhood, who are preparing a film to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Verdi cinemas. But this scene is metafiction: they are actually the protagonists —the common thread— of La vida es Verdi (Life is Verdi), the documentary feature film directed by Berta García Lacht and co-produced by A Contracorriente Films, along with Isabel Coixet, which pays homage to cinemas that have been much more than projection rooms for the Gràcia neighborhood for a century. And the secret is not precisely in beer or a glass of cava.
The Club Coliseum, the Cinema Alexandra, the Urgell cinemas, the Palau Balañá, the Casablanca Kaplan, the Comèdia cinema… the list is long. Barcelona has seen many movie theaters die in recent years. And, in fact, the Verdi was also on the verge of disappearing on more than one occasion. Perhaps that's why Adolfo Blanco, CEO of A Contracorriente Films —the company that has managed the cinema for ten years—, says that the Verdi is "a flower in the desert." Aware of the times it "has been in the ICU," he is proud that today the queues in the street to see Verdi films are a common sight in the neighborhood.
The queues, he knows, haven't always been there. "It was a cinema destined to close." A double feature. But in 1982 Enric Pérez dared to save it. "You alone?" the girls ask him in the documentary. "You alone?" they insist. He alone, without partners or shareholders. These —welcome, of course— would arrive years later, with A Contracorriente Films.
Enric Pérez, determined to prevent "the Verdi's shutters from coming down," redesigned the concept of the cinema and started with a single large room. Then he added rooms and efforts. In October '87, he already had three rooms with art-house and subtitled films. And in the nineties, after the great public response, he already had four.
"With the expansion of two new rooms, the Verdi cinemas will reach a capacity of 1,750 seats"While other cinemas were closing, he was adding rooms, "thanks to the Verdi-addicts who supported my work," Pérez explained this Tuesday at the film screening.Life is Verdi, where they have also presented the commemorative book of the Centenary. In this vital journey, he highlighted "the luck" he had in meeting Adolfo Blanco and his team, who arrived at the opportune moment: when he, after surviving meningitis, could no longer captain the project as before.
And with current figures, the success story explains itself: the cinemas, which currently have nine screens, will increase to eleven this year (gaining the space of the adjacent supermarket) and will add 200 more seats. In total, they will reach a capacity of 1,750 seats. A commitment to growth that comes after a historic year: in 2024 they received 500,000 spectators, 30% more than the previous year.
But the success story cannot be explained only with business figures. It is also explained by looking at the neighborhood —as García Lacht does in La vida es Verdi— and by revisiting memory, as Josep Maria Contel, Enric Pérez and Paz Recolons do in the commemorative book edited by Plataforma Editorial.
A story that begins in 1894, when the building's construction permit was requested, and that goes through very different scenarios: the Verdi was not always a cinema, nor was it always called Verdi. It was a theater, a dance hall, a children's dining room during the war, a renowned discotheque, then an after-hour… And the same transformations that the building has experienced, its surroundings have also experienced: in fact, in 1894 Gràcia was not yet part of Barcelona, it was an independent town.
The history of the Verdi has advanced in parallel with that of the neighborhood that surrounds it. And that is why, looking at the Verdi is looking at the squares and life in the streets of Gràcia. And this is the proposal made by Berta García Lacht, who, while playing with interviews, humor, archive images and eclectic collaborations such as Richard Gere, J.A, Bayona or Albert Serra, manages to break the fourth wall and remind us of the intact magic of cinema: that in a dark room full of people, the seventh art is capable of making you travel alone, face to face with the screen, towards other realities and stories. Today, that of La vida es Verdi.