Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Watch us on Youtube Join the Archive Mailing List Read our Blog

A Life in Shadows

A Life in Shadows
July 15, 2016 - 7:30 pm
In-person: 
Esteve Riambau, Filmoteca de Catalunya.

Preserved by the Filmoteca de Catalunya and Filmoteca Española

A Life in Shadows  (1949)

Vida en sombras

This moving feature displays the extent to which the Civil War impinged on the life of one man with a passion for the cinema.  A jewel of Spanish filmmaking produced in the pall of “franquismo,” the independent production faced censorship and other official resistance.  Little known until its recent rediscovery, the film is now hailed as a cinematic rarity, free from the aesthetic and ideological constraints of 1940s Spanish cinema.

DCP, b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles, 80 min.  DIR: Llorenç Llobet Gràcia.  SCR: Victorio Aguado, Llorenç Llobet Gràcia.  CAST: Fernando Fernán Gómez, María Dolores Pradera.

Preceded by

News of Spain  (Spain, 1938)


A newsreel of the Spanish Civil War's events, produced by Laya Films, the cinema unit of the official Propaganda Commissariat of the Catalan government. 

DigiBeta, b/w, in Catalan with English subtitles, 10 min.

The Coastal Cork Makers  (Spain, 1937)

Els Tapers de la Costa

A portrait of the centuries' old Catalan craft of cork-making, crucial to global wine culture and a possible boon to the war effort.

DCP, b/w, in Catalan with English subtitles, 10 min.