On the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, the High Commissioner of the Republic and French government official DE ROLLER is a calculating man with flawless manners. His somewhat broad perception of his role brings him to navigate the high end ’establishment’ as well as shady venues where he mingles with the locals. Especially since a persistent rumor has been going around: the sighting of a submarine whose ghostly presence could herald the return of French nuclear testing.
Albert Serra
ELS NOMS DE CRIST, Spain 2010, 193 min
The three hours series consists of 14 episodes created for the exhibition “Are you ready for TV?” at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Part of the film was shot inside the museum. The series deals with the difficulty financing a so-called “difficult film” and a range of topics, from the relationship between text and image to the concept of names, the way in which the public inhabits the museum environment and the relationship between exhibition space and art work.
EL SENYOR HA FET EN MI MERAVELLES, Spain 2011, 146 min
As part of a project for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Albert Serra and Lisandro Alonso agree to exchange filmed letters where both engage with their previous works. Part of the crew of HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS travels to La Mancha to see the real settings of Don Quixote's life in order to shoot a new film. When they realize that the landscapes no longer exist, they start filming the interior of the hotel or their van.
Spain 2014, 18 min
A singer serenades a small crowd in a moody nightclub who all look the part of Fassbinder characters. The title comes from the favourite drink of Fassbinder's film “Beware of the Holy Whore”. The short film is part of Albert Serra's 101-hour portrait of Germany “The Three Little Pigs” - Fassbinder, Goethe and Hitler, realized by Albert Serra for dOCUMENTA (13).
LA MORT DE LOUIS XIV, F/Spain/Portugal 2016, 115 min
August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest king of France, surrounded by his relatives and doctors.
ROI SOLEIL, Spain 2018, 62 min
In front of the visitors of an art gallery, an actor stages the slow agony of the French monarch Louis XIV, until his final death, in a physical and psychological challenge of remarkable complexity. ROI SOLEIL is a reflection on the visual meaning of the actor's visage, and the deep mystery behind all genuine representation. The three essential dimensions of this dying body, the person, the actor (the vain person who is aware of being filmed) and the character, are questioned and merged with sensuality and innocence.
HISTÒRIA DE LA MEVA MORT, F/Spain 2013, 148 min
Casanova meets a new servant who will witness his last moments in life. From a Swiss castle with its gallant and libertine Eighteenth Century atmosphere, to his final days spent in poor and shadowy Northern lands. There, his rationalist way of thinking and frivolous and mundane world will succumb to and new, violent, occult and romantic force, represented by Dracula and his eternal power.
HONOR DE CAVALLERIA, Spain 2006, 107 min
HONOR OF THE KNIGHTS reduces Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" to its essentials: Quixote and Sancho on a journey. They gallop through the country in search of adventures. Along the way, they philosophize about spirituality, chivalry and daily life. Their friendship deepens.
EL CANT DELS OCELLS, Spain 2008, 93 min
In luminous black and white, the film tells the biblical legend of the Magi, who follow the star of Bethlehem to find the newborn baby Jesus. They embark on a journey that takes on epic proportions. Partly filmed in the mountains of Iceland, partly in the hot, deserted interior of the Canary Islands.
For his second feature film BIRDSONG, Albert Serra was inspired by a traditional Catalan Christmas carol, "El cant dels ocells" (Birdsong), in which more than thirty species of birds, large and small, celebrate the birth of Christ.
„My films are improvised, there is no script. I always use non-professional actors I know, more or less, so I intuit how they will react. I put them in situations where I ask them to say or do something so I can more or less predict how it will develop. There is a beautiful quote of Picasso’s: ‘I don’t look for things, I find them.“
Photo: Albert Serra (© Claudia Robert Malagelada)
DE/FR/PT/ES 2019, 132 min
1774, shortly before the French Revolution, somewhere between Potsdam and Berlin. Madame de Dumeval, the Duc de Tesis and the Duc de Wand, libertines expelled from the puritanical court of Louis XVI, seek the support of the legendary Duc de Walchen, German seducer and freethinker, lonely in a country where hypocrisy and false virtue reign.
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