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He is a hardy nonconformist, an enigma, with skin-deep sensibility and a thrilling visual talent. His cinematographic genius has nothing to do with conventions or fashionable canons. He is said to be “strange” because he looks you straight in the eye, for all his timidity. He never compromises, hates hypocrisy, and looks for events and humour in the real underground of the suburbs. His latest film Pa negre has won an astounding nine Goya prizes, including best director.
Agustí Villaronga was born in Palma, the grandson of puppeteers and son of a war child who ended up being a postman and who loved cinema. When I was young we’d play at projecting with drawings, matchboxes, and torches. My father also inspired me to collect pictures of actors. When I was 14, I decided to become a director. After finishing school I wrote to Rossellini. It was difficult to get into his school. I started University in Barcelona: Geography and history, and started making short films.
Fascinated by new Brazilian film and by the Hungarian Miklós Janscó, he had trouble finding a producer. But Núria Espert and Víctor García offered him a role in Yerma. He spent three years on the stage in Europe and America, learning how to travel to places that are hard to find on the map, and becoming proficient in style, lighting technique, and acting.
Tras el cristal (1986) was his first film. He immediately became a trendy author for his images without concessions and the explosive intellectual plot. El niño de la luna (1989) opened at the Berlin Festival and baffled international critics. But it won a Goya for best original script as well as other European awards.
- What did directing Pa Negre mean to you?
- It was a film in which I left aside the peculiarities implied in auteur film to tell a story. It is the film with the least stylistic frills. I wanted to pull the audience into the story and I used elements of melodrama, which I had never done before. It was one of my most pleasant shootings. The relationship with the actors was great. I selected children at castings in the primary schools around Manlleu and chose intuitively.
Two children won a Goya for their acting. Massa d’Or, the production company belonging to the indestructible Isona Passola, risked all their capital. They still don’t know what happened. Box office record, more and more copies demanded from all over the world.
- What dies it mean to win more Goyas than anybody else?
- The first surprise was the great reception by critics, press, and public in San Sebastian. Then followed the Gaudí and now this. The first weekend after the Goya, we had to hastily make 120 copies. In two days the box-office surpassed the five previous months it had been screening. That is a great personal satisfaction, and a powerful stimulus after many years of difficulties and tenacious struggle. Now I can think about a more personal career. I still have along way to go.
An extremely ambitious project has been resting in his drawer for many years: a personal cinematographic interpretation of Mercè Rodoreda’s La mort de la primavera. Some time ago he presented an exhibition of very strange elements of décor in the Palau de la Virreina.
For the time being, he is shooting a miniseries with Carmen Maura, “Carta a Eva” (letter for eve) for TVE. It is about three women who coincided on the backstage of power in 1947: Carmen Polo, Evita Peron, and Juana Doña, a communist condemned to death.
A walk
The paths along the banks of the Ter between Verges and Colomers
A cultural space
Mas Pi, in Verges, Mas Sorrer, or the Girasoles, where they organize short film festivals in summer.
A village
Les Olives
A restaurant
Can Quel in Foixà
A dish
Snails
What could the Empordà do without?
I like it as it is
A place that inspires you
The house of Jaume Perecaula, my director of photography. It lies between Les Olives, Jafre, and Verges. I’ve written pieces of all my films on his kitchen table.
Advice for politicians
To disappear
Your special Empordanese
Dalí. And my local friends: they are all strange.
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