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Filmoteca Canaria begins a cycle with some cinematic adaptations of his most famous works
Canary Film Library He joins José Saramago’s centenary with a cycle that includes several cinematic adaptations of the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner’s most important works. The titles chosen are “José y Pilar”, “Enemy”, “A blind” and “La balsa de piedra”, which can be seen starting next week in Gran Canaria and Tenerife, as well as in Lanzarote starting in October. The course was organized by the Government of the Canary Islands in cooperation with the Jose Saramago House Museum and the Tillas City Council.
The name José Saramago, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, has been essential to understanding the future of the Iberian Peninsula for more than half a century and to understanding the importance of one of the major authors of the literature of the twentieth century to younger generations. , who determined his last place of residence on the island of Lanzarote.
Although time dictates the value of a literary work, it is easy to assert that Saramago will be read for as long as there are readers, despite the fact that, as he wrote in An Essay on Blindness, each time “we have fewer or have feelings , but we stop using the words they express, and thus lose them.” A few writers can be said that each of their fiction is incomparable to the previous one. Saramago was an author who knew that every story had an ideal and essential way of telling it. Also on the screen.
Jose and Pilar
The course begins with “José y Pilar”, on Tuesday the 13th at the Guiniguada Theater in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and on Thursday the 15th at Espacio La Granja in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. “The Elephant’s Journey,” the book in which Saramago recounts the adventures and adventures of a serpent being transported from the court of King John III to the court of Archduke Maximilian in Austria, is the starting point for this documentary by director Miguel Gonçalves Méndez, which depicts the relationship between the writer and Pilar del Río.
Sample of the couple in their daily lives in Lanzarote and Lisbon, at home and on their business trips around the world. “José y Pilar” is an amazing portrait of an author in his creative process and the relationship of a married couple committed to changing the world, or at least improving it. The film reveals the unknown Saramago, eliminating preconceived notions and also proving that genius and simplicity go hand in hand.
“blind”
The next show will be Blind, the 2008 film based on his work Essay on Blindness, which can be viewed in these two spaces on Tuesday 20 and Thursday 22 respectively. The film, signed by Brazilian Fernando Meirelles, tells the story of a country suddenly devastated by an unknown epidemic. People with the disease lose their sight and are isolated in hospitals by the government without receiving explanations. Chaos erupts in the streets and in these medical centers, and in the midst of madness a woman pretends to be injured so as not to abandon her sick husband to his fate.
The enemy and the refined man
The cycle will continue in October with the Canadian film “The Enemy” (2013), based on the novel “El hombre Dupraado”, scheduled for release on Tuesday 4 in Gran Canaria and on Thursday 6 in Tenerife. and the Spanish “La balsa de piedra” (2002), whose adaptation of his novel of the same title offers the best exquisite touches to this selection, on October 11 and 13 in Guiniguada and Espacio La Granja, respectively.
“The Enemy” tells the story of Adam, a quiet and kind college professor. His life takes a drastic turn when he sees an actor identical to him on TV. Adam becomes obsessed with this man and the idea of finding him to find answers. What he finds during this search will completely change his life, which will never be the same again. In La balsa de piedra, an inexplicable scientific catastrophe separates the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of the European continent, so that Spain and Portugal become a stone raft wandering aimlessly across the ocean. Chaos erupts within the peninsula and internationally, when the United States begins plotting to take control of that miserable land.
Tickets are available on the Filmoteca Canaria website, as well as Teatro Guiniguada and Espacio La Granja at €2 and with discounts for certain groups. These same films will also be shown in Lanzarote in October, in a program that will be made available soon.
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