Short films by Montxo Armendáriz (b. 1949)
LA DANZA DE LO GRACIOSO aka FUNNY DANCE (1979), 12 min. IMDb page
Quote:
Monologue of a clown in front of a camera. Constant interruptions, which at first he accepts coily, prevent him from finishing his tale. The director interrupts him to insert some images representing a cliched reflection on the passage of time; the cameraman leaves him out of the shot to include bucolic Basque landscapes, and the producer interrupts him a third time.Read More »
Tasio (1984)
Wonderful, simple story of a young lad growing up in his rural surroundings, more or less in the line of `El Sur’, Erice’s little masterpiece produced just two years earlier. Armendáriz achieves an intense and intimate portrait of Tasio and the people around him without any over-dramatization, using simple but effective dialogue, careful characterization, and of course the brilliant photography. Tasio learns to eke out a living making coal, really charcoal-making for domestic use. Wood is piled up into a great heap, maybe three or four metres high and up to eight metres diameter, and set alight in the inside so that it burns very slowly. The `carbonero’ – Tasio – must attend this smouldering heap by climbing up on it and poking and prodding holes deep into it so that there is a minimum of ventilation. You can still find some examples of this old craft in rural parts of Spain even today.Read More »