José Luis Guerín – Original Works

Largometraje – Feature film

«Los motivos de Berta» / Berta’s Motives, Spain, 1984, 115′ PELÍCULA COMPLETA

La vida tranquila y solitaria de una adolescente que pasa su tiempo jugando con insectos y otros animales cambia de repente con la llegada de un equipo de cine y un misterioso personaje (Source)

The life of a young girl who plays with little animals and insects is suddenly changed with the arrival of a film crew and a strange man. (Source)

City Life, Argentina, 1990, 251′

Collaboration between Alejandro Agresti, Gábor Altorjay, José Luis Guerín and 10 others, each short is set during one week and refers to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the recurrent attempts to raise her. (Source)

Innisfree, Spain, 1990, 110′

Guerín travels to the Irish town of Innisfree, where his beloved John Ford shot The Quiet Man, to explore the still echoing changes since Ford’s visit years before. Revisiting the past using re-enactments with an imagined Maureen O’Hara, Innisfree explores the difference between then and now in order to chart the interstices between memory and history, between imagination, fantasy and reality, and between classical narrative cinema and contemporary, observational documentary. (Source)

«Tren de sombras» / Train of Shadows, Spain, 1997, 88′

On November 8, 1930, amateur filmmaker Gérard Fleury stood on the shores of Normandy’s Lake Thuit, watching the sun rise in preparation for an upcoming shoot that would never take place; he died later that day under mysterious circumstances. Out of this information, Guerín constructs a haunting meditation on the photographic and cinematic image, on loss and decay, on the passing of time, the recounting of history and the blurring of fact and fiction. He uses both re-enactments and decayed images to render ambiguous past and present, historical record and speculation, and to make poetry out of loss. (Source)

«En construcción» / Work in Progress, Spain, 2001, 125′

Exceptionally in a career spent shooting films in other countries, Guerín’s Work In Progress takes place in his native Barcelona. The film’s ostensible subject is the construction of a building of condominiums in the city’s «El Xino» quarter. This rough neighborhood is a home to workers, immigrants, squatters, prostititutes and drug dealers. The construction site represents an attempt to «improve» the neighborhood – by pushing some longtime residents out. Such is the backdrop to the film, which is made up of staged and semi-staged episodes featuring neighborhood residents and workers at the construction site. Guerín magically spins spellbinding cinema from the simplest elements of urban interaction. (Source)

«En la ciudad de Sylvia» / In the City of Sylvia, Spain/France, 2007, 84′

An unnamed young man arrives in the foreign city of Strasbourg for reasons unstated. He waits at a hotel, visits a café, sketches passersby… Eventually his motives are revealed, but it is not a traditional narrative that Guerín is after so much as the urban experience of watching, waiting, absorbing. Out of these materials Guerín builds a spellbinding film that reminds us of cinema’s powerful ability to evoke the tugs of memory, desire and the transitory. An extraordinary city film, Sylvia almost entirely eschews dialogue to instead give a symphonic voice to the city itself through a rich and fully immersive soundtrack of urban sounds, explosions of music and strange echoes. (Source)

«Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia» / Some Photos in the City of Sylvia, Spain, 2007, 67′

Antes de realizar En la Ciudad de Sylvia, José Luís Guerín pasó gran cantidad de tiempo filmando y trabajando con una serie de apuntes que ahora ven la luz bajo el título de Unas Fotos en la Ciudad de Sylvia. Esta película posee total independencia narrativa con  respecto a la ya mencionada En la Ciudad de Sylvia. «En ningún caso unas fotos deben verse como un esbozo, está hecha a partir de fotografías en blanco y negro, mudas, en ese caso lo que cuenta es la pequeña elipsis que hay entre una fotografía y otra… Entre una foto y otra hay un tiempo que se fuga, un misterio que se escapa…. Esas limitaciones autoimpuestas requerían de un enunciado en primera persona que actuara como vía o conductor. En este sentido esas notas son mucho más narrativas que En la Ciudad de Sylvia» (Source)

This remarkable companion piece to In the City of Sylvia offers a compendium of images recorded by Guerín in Strasbourg while searching for the traces of a (fictional?) brief encounter some years earlier with a young woman named Sylvia. The beautiful black and white digital cinematography alternates between moving and still images, stitching together a unique kind of film journal, a cinematic sketchbook for In the City of Sylvia, a reworking of the photographic and documentary roots of cinema, and something absolutely new. A must-see. (Source)

Guest, Spain, 2010, 133′

“Llego a una ciudad desconocida y callejeo cámara en mano, sin otro rumbo ni idea preconcebida más que la de una predisposición abierta al encuentro, a la revelación latente en lo fortuito”. Durante un año, de septiembre de 2007 a septiembre de 2008, José Luis Guerin aceptó acudir a cuantos festivales le invitaran a presentar su última película, «En la ciudad de Sylvia», con el propósito de filmar imágenes y sonidos de los lugares y las gentes que se cruzaran en su camino, apenas provisto de una pequeña cámara digital y acompañado de un reducido equipo de rodaje. (Source)

Filmmaker Jose Luis Guerin documents his experience during a year of traveling as a guest of film festivals to present his previous film («En la ciudad de Sylvia»/In the City of Sylvia). What emerges is a wonderfully humane and sincere portrayal of the people that he meets when he goes off the beaten track in some of the world’s major cities. (Source)

«Correspondencia Jonas Mekas- J.L. Guerín» / Correspondences: Jonas Mekas- J.L. Guerín, Spain, 2011, 99′

Entre José Luis Guerin y Jonas Mekas se ha establecido una relación epistolar en toda regla, una carta mensual en que se impone el principio de Mekas que Guerin asume como propio: el cine es la reacción a la vida. A partir de esta premisa, una serie de nueve cartas, filmadas en los lugares más variados del mundo, dan lugar a una relación personal en la que se descubren impresiones y afinidades entre dos cineastas unidos por la voluntad de compartir preocupaciones y puntos de vista. (Source)

Letters from two acclaimed directors offer a remarkable portrait of their attitudes to the craft of filmmaking and the world around them. (Source)

«La academia de las musas» / The Academy of the Muses, Spain, 2015, 92′

Al terminar sus clases, el profesor es cuestionado por su esposa, quién recela del proyecto académico que está tramando: una «Academia de las musas» que, inspirada en referentes clásicos, debería servir para regenerar el mundo a través del compromiso con la poesía. El controvertido propósito desencadena una ronda de escenas entorno a la palabra y el deseo. (Source)

On returning from class, a teacher is questioned by his wife, who distrusts his pedagogic project: an “Academy of the Muses” inspired by classical references, which is supposed to contribute to regenerating the world through poetry. The controversial project triggers a series of situations dominated by words and desire. (Source)

Cortometraje – Short

Souvenir, Spain, 1986, 5′

“White clouds pass by Notre-Dame in an old film by Jean Renoir. And I tell myself, thus, these clouds crossed over there more than 50 years ago.” A rare short film about memory and loss directed by José Luis Guerín. (Source)

«Tren Estrasburgo-Paris» / Train Strausbourg-Paris, Spain, 2006, 1′

Train Strausbourg–Paris primarily consists of Guerin’s earlier, preliminary attempt at filming the elements of a scene that appears in In the City of Sylvia. (Source)

«Mujer esperando al tranvía» / Woman Waiting for the Tram, Spain, 2006, 3′

Woman Waiting for the Tram primarily consists of Guerin’s earlier, preliminary attempt at filming the elements of a scene that appears in In the City of Sylvia practiced from a distance. (Source)

«Dos cartas a Ana» / Two Letters For Anna, Spain, 2010, 29′

A legend tells of a young Greek woman languishing for her lover who has departed for battle. She creates his shadow on the wall by the help of a candle, and may thus for ever have the illusion of sleeping next to him. (Source)

«Recuerdos de una mañana» / Memories of a Morning, South Korea, 2011, 47′

En la madrugada del 21 de enero de 2008, un violinista que vive en en mismo barrio que Guerin se suicida al tirarse desnudo por la ventana. La única cosa que sabemos de él, es que hace mucho tiempo preparó una nueva traducción de Werther de Goethe.

On the morning of January 21st, 2008, a violinist living in Guerín’s neighbourhood committed suicide by jumping naked from his window. The only thing that he has known about him, is that recently prepared a new translation of Werther by Goethe. (Source)

«Le Saphir de Saint-Louis», Spain, 2015, 35′

In Saint-Louis Cathedral, at La Rochelle, in a chapel filled with merchant marine ex-votos, there’s a painting that witnesses the tragedy of The Saphir in 1741. This painting is like a secret door in a Cathedral that opens on to the great History. (Source)

En la Catedral Saint-Louis en La Rochelle hay una capela llena de exvotos de la marina mercante con un cuadro que es testigo de la tragedia de «Le Saphir» de 1741. El cuadro es una puerta secreta en la Catedral que muestra la gran Historia.

Ensayo – Essay

• Luis Guerín, José. Work in Progress. Rouge. Web. 18 Dec 2015.

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