"The Three Little Pigs" and the wolf

The film, shot in 2012 for the 13th edition of the dOCUMENTA fair in Kassel (Germany), is considered by many to be the magnum opus of the Banyoles director, who continues to collect international awards and mentions for his recent and acclaimed Pacifiction (2022). This premiere, although late, we owe to the insistence of Joana Hurtado, director of Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, who, after seeing the original work in Germany, was fascinated by the film and decided to translate it into Catalan and bring it to Spain due to the general lack of interest in the country's film circuit.

In Germany, it has been exhibited three times with different footage: originally in installation format, and then edited for cinematic format. The work was born from the proposal made by the dOCUMENTA organizers to Serra after his participation in the festival, to shoot something in situ. Initially, the director thought of locating and establishing a shoot between Catalonia and Germany, but the organizers suggested he shoot entirely in Germany, a challenge, since Albert Serra does not speak German and did not know any actors there.

The director chose amateur actors, people from the festival, dOCUMENTA workers and organizers for the castings (from a carpenter to an art critic) and had total freedom to bring his usual team of technicians to Kassel to shoot. He thought of working again on a recurring theme throughout his filmography: history and its relevance in thought, customs, and the development of culture. He wanted to talk about the history of Germany and chose three texts by three characters he considered key figures of this country: Goethe, Hitler, and Fassbinder. The shooting plan was to record one hour for approximately one hundred days divided into two parts: one part from early June to mid-July, and then, the last fortnight of August. The technicians would assemble the material from two days before and project the material shot three days earlier, which allowed a one-day margin for error. The particular shooting process and its vicissitudes, Serra's doubts as a creator and his intentions and achievements, were compiled in a shooting notebook published in the Cultura(s) supplement of La Vanguardia under the title Diaris de Kàssel

For the project, more than 50 people participated and strange dissonances arose from improvisation and trial and error. Several actors were used for the same role, that of director Fassbinder, when reciting his words, while the voice-off of the interviewer would be that of the actor Lluís Serrat himself (a regular of Serra and known for his role as Sancho in Honor de Cavallería). Clemens Alban would end up being Hitler and Harald Kimpel, Goethe.

The chosen texts are of great relevance: Conversations with Goethe, by Johann Peter Eckerman; Hitler's Private Conversations, transcribed between 1941 and 1944; and Fassbinder by Fassbinder, edited by Robert Fischer. The texts in the third person were adapted into the first, so that the actors could literally put them in their mouths.

For the sets, a small palace was used, a "mobile" theater, which was moved to the middle of a field, and the kitsch bar of dOCUMENTA itself, the Ekstase Bar.

For the current projection, Fabra i Coats has designed a large format triangular screen suspended in the air. On each screen, we see one of the characters, which in turn, is one of the three parts of the film. The film has a final duration of 101 hours divided into 33 hours per screen. For the translation, nine months were spent and between 7 and 8 people collaborated, plus a Catalan proofreader. In the author's words, "the new translation gives more strength to the film due to the characteristics and poetics of Catalan".

The film presents a historical contrast and a contrast of personalities that have nothing to do with each other. Perhaps what unites them, in Serra's words: "megalomania". But the truth is that there are connections between them. They are strong personalities, who, in many cases, made a world to their measure, did not adhere to a trend and marked, for better or worse, history with their passage.

The texts that are collected are interpreted. They are a kind of interior monologues in which there is no room for interpellation or interlocution with the spectator. Frightened, they feel the voracious presence of the camera, which judges them, as if they were behind a glass in Nuremberg at the mercy of public opinion, which in its infantilism, pretends to rewrite history by permanently taking it out of context. The spectator is, now, a subjective witness to the reality of these beings. Characters who recite without any dramaturgy, with total opacity of ideas and emotions. They are real people saying the text and that's it.

This tension, so common in Albert Serra's cinema, between reality and fiction, between the language of documentary naturalism and literary characters, is always transferred to the final figure of the shot, to the actors. These, tired, jaded and indifferent, are forced to embody a piece of history without drama, without context, without any history beyond the text.

Albert Serra talks about history from the remains, reflecting on who and how these remains are created and who and how they are perceived, establishing an undeniable bridge with the present

Thus, we overcome the caricature of Hitler with a reinterpreted Hitler. There is a more serious and profound approach through his words. One can be horrified to agree with him on such fundamental issues as animal abuse, the will of the Russian people, and even the connections between Russia and Ukraine that extend to the present day. There is a grotesque characterization of the figure, full of ambiguity and contradiction: solemnity in the text and, at the same time, the permanent sensation of a play-acting, of a farce, of a fake mustache close to mockery. The reflection: an accurate and unfiltered analysis of the gene of destruction and the different phases of evil.

With Goethe, another contradictory character, we fall into the intentional tedium of his political and utopian speeches, now outdated, which drag on as he lengthens the text in an almost ridiculous way. Quotes from Lord Byron, Shakespeare, and ideas about the construction of states and how the population should be educated.

For Fassbinder, the German director, Albert Serra proposes a decadent post-war space, a sickly place of marginalized people with an interview format, somewhat more contemporary than his predecessors. There is a certain intimacy, mixed with decadence, sometimes moral, sometimes physical, and a series of characters within the same character that does not reveal the true face, the murky over the sincere.

"The three contained an intrinsic evil", according to Serra; and he emphasizes that at no point is there any hint of apology or recognition on his part, rather quite the opposite, a desire for caricature and mockery. Hence the title: a ridicule in the form of a fable of something that "are constructions that amount to nothing. You blow, and they fall to the ground".

There is also much of a general trivialization of contemporary art, of the lack of seriousness in ideas and how these are imposed on new generations. In short, an example of the ephemeral nature of discourse.

And the film, accidentally, is not created to be seen in its entirety, but to be seen in fragments. No viewer can watch it completely, mainly due to its duration and the format in which it is exhibited. It is born, then, as an infinite film, of which we can only enjoy scraps and we approach the protagonists indirectly. It is 24 hours of uninterrupted exhibition, like a Velázquez in the Prado, where, when the lights go out and the last visitor leaves, the work is still there, existing by itself. The film, then, advances inexorably. And this is the filmmaker's final reflection: "the important thing is that the work exists."

As a viewer, one must consider what relationship the author has established with them and with the work, since if that is the primary objective and the sole discourse and intention of the work (a kind of mysterious and inconceivable Book of Sand by Borges, but in film), it is worth noting the position of inferiority in front of such an ambitious work in which we find ourselves. To some, it will inevitably sound like pretentious conceit due to its duration. Albert Serra points out, perhaps anticipating this fact, what could be its ideal format, the definitive format in which the work could be presented in the future: in an online video container, with a timeline bar, where the viewer regains control and can pause the film, go to the bathroom, fast forward, advance, rewind, and even go directly to the end.

The idea of not having to wait to see a film end, of not staying to contemplate the end of a show, is a topic of current relevance. Many journalists have been surprised by how the local fans at the Qatar World Cup do not finish watching the matches and abandon their seats no matter how interesting the game is. This new concept of understanding entertainment makes us reflect on what and how we manage our attention, our free time, and our leisure. What to some may seem a lack of respect for creators, for others is the result of a generalized lack of attention, based on the permanent need to surprise, to excite, to provoke at an unsustainable pace for any discourse with certain depth or expectations of profundity. We are, then, in strange times, where works and their creators must reinvent themselves or resist. How do we maintain user attention in a world of futility, of ethereal topics and empty content?

The screening, which can be enjoyed until February 12, 2023, premieres the new year's program dedicated to the most relevant visual artists of the moment.