Irish Film Institute -THE BIGGER PICTURE: SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

THE BIGGER PICTURE: SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

Director: VICTOR ERICE

98 mins, Spain, 1973, Subtitled, Bu-ray


This film screened 15th February 2016.

Our monthly programme strand in which a key film is presented in the context of a notional film canon.

This month’s selection sees film critic Michael Doherty present the debut feature from Victor Erice, considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema, and one of the great films about childhood. In 1940, just after Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War, six-year-old Ana is entranced by a screening of James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), a fascination that influences her reaction when she discovers a wounded soldier hiding in a barn on her family’s farm. Rich in symbolism critical of the Franco regime that escaped the censor of the time, this visually beautiful film is also an evocative depiction of the power and innocence of a child’s imagination. (Notes by Kevin Coyne)

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