The ECVS opens its doors to the CATALAN FILM FESTIVAL in its 9th version with a tremendous vampire cult film by Catalan director Pere Portabella.

CUADECUC
Vampir
Director: Pere Portabella / 1971 / 66 minutes / Spain

New 2K Restoration

When: Friday 12 April / 7.30pm Doors open, 8pm Screening starts

Where: ECVS – 23A Fettes Row, Edinburgh, EH3 6RH

A major figure of Catalan cinema, Pere Portabella’s contributions have included a variety of roles (such as co-producing Buñuel’s Viridiana), but most importantly as the director of a number of groundbreaking films from the 1960s and 1970s. Filmed on the set of Franco’s cult film Count Dracula starring Christopher Lee, Vampir-Cuadecuc mixes making-of footage with an investigation into the figure of the vampire. Both playful and deadly serious, with high-contrast black-and-white cinematography and an electronic soundtrack, “it is a film within a film, a discourse within a discourse, in other words, a ‘bloodsucking film’ of another.” (Portabella).

“My favorite Portabella film. A masterpiece. Recalling without imitating such classics as Nosferatu and Vampyr, the film uses high-contrast cinematography to evoke the dissolution and decay that strikes viewers who see those films today in fading prints… One of the most beautiful movies ever made about anything.” — Jonathan Rosenbaum

“A hypnotic 1970 deconstruction of a Christopher Lee vampire film directed by that other and quite opposite pillar of the Spanish cinema, the exploitation specialist Jess Franco.”— Dave Kehr, The New York Times