The pyrotechnic and fallera inspiration of berlanguiano cinema

Luis García-Berlanga grew up on Calle Barcelonina on the corner of Plaza del Ayuntamiento. There was Postres Martí, the bakery of the maternal family and where his uncle, the musician Luis Martí Alegre became president of the Central Fallera Board. As if the influence of the Josepian festivals in his cinema was not sufficiently contrasted, he made it clear in 1997 in Valencia: «I have always declared that my films are falleras, pyrotechnic and shot on the basis of instant inspiration, that is to say, the ‘ pensat i fet ‘of which at least I boast and I hope that some of those present ».

He proclaimed that declaration of Fallas love in his most personal and emotional speech when he was named an honorary doctorate by the Polytechnic University of Valencia in 1997. Berlanga was always in Fallas and only a complicated filming could keep him from celebrating Sant Josep’s day in the city that saw him born a hundred years ago.

His true ‘mascletà’ fallera was in 2007 when the Mossén Sorell-Corona commission managed to materialize the filmmaker’s old dream, planting a falla, the mythical ‘Història d’una mamella’, a daring Berlanguian obsession. The project had been born two decades earlier, when on March 19, 1987 it burned in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and the initiative of the filmmaker and his friend Manuel Vicent arose to plant a falla right there.

To address this fallero cinema of ‘pensat i fet’, Levante-EMV has organized the cultural meeting ‘Berlanga y las Fallas’ next Wednesday at the Talia Theater, starting at 6 pm, within the programming of the events of the Year Berlanga of the Valencia City Council. Actor Guillermo Montesinos will open the meeting. The Valencian interpreter participated in three of the filmmaker’s films, “La vaquilla”, “Todos a la prison” and his latest film “Paris-Timbuktu”. Montesinos will hold a conversation with the editor-in-chief of Culture of Levante-EMV and curator of the exhibition ‘¡Viva Berlanga!’ from MuVIM, Joan-Carles Martí.

Immediately afterwards, Montesinos himself will participate in a round table to address the filmmaker’s relationship with the Fallas festivals with Miguel Ángel Pérez, president of the Mossén Sorell-Corona commission, who treated Berlanga throughout the process of ‘Història d’una mamella ‘; Vicent Borrego responsible for the Berlanga Year of the Falla Na Jornada, Teresa Cebrián, the commissioner of the Berlanga Year of the Valencia City Council, the vice mayor Sandra Gómez and the councilor Emiliano García.

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