Cuadecuc, vampir
Pere Portabella / ES, 1971 / 66 min.
Catalan underground filmmaker Pere Portabella used his 16mm camera to shoot an experimental making-of documentary about Jess Franco’s B movie El conde Dracula, starring Christopher Lee. The processed documentary footage turned out to be scarier than the film itself… Chosen by Albert Serra.
Spain, in the early 1970s. While mass tourism to Spanish beaches gathers pace and fascist dictator Francisco Franco is doing everything he can to keep his brutal regime in power, Catalan filmmaker and producer Pere Portabella is clandestinely working on an experimental documentary.
Cuadecuc, vampir – ‘cuadecuc’ is Catalan for ‘worm-tail’ and refers to the last, unshot portion of the film roll in the camera – is a vampiric deconstruction of the vampire film; Portabella’s camera sinks its metaphorical fangs into the neck of Jesse Franco’s commercial production, the frame of which is exposed, and so becomes meat for a new vampire film, beyond classification.
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Director
Pere Portabella
Production year
1971
Country
ES
Original title
Cuadecuc, vampir
Length
66 min.
Language
English, Spanish
Subtitles
ENG
Format
DCP
Part of
Albert Serra
Eye Filmmuseum presents the first exhibition in the Netherlands about the work of Catalan film and theatre director Albert Serra. Transforming the entire exhibition space into an immersive stage, Serra orchestrates nocturnal and clandestine encounters where theatre, cinema, and art converge.
Why in Eye
The link with Serra is clear. He plays with the Dracula character in Story of My Death (2013) and is interested in the ambiguous interaction between actor and character – in the same way that, in Portabella’s film, alongside ‘Dracula’ we also see actor Christopher Lee himself, outside of his role, cracking jokes on camera.
Thijs Havens
Programmer Eye Filmmuseum
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