The Spanish master Juan Antonio Bardem stood at the centre of a family of major cinematic talents (he was the uncle of actor Javier Bardem), rooted deeply in Spain’s cultural and entertainment industries. He devoted his career to bringing a committed, militant vision of reality to the screen. Born in Madrid in 1922, he lived his formative years under the Franco dictatorship, which he fiercely opposed as a passionate member of the Spanish Communist Party. The films he wrote and directed in the first part of his career – shaped and constrained by censorship that erased or deliberately distorted words, images, and scenes – offer lucid examples of a cinema that, despite everything, rejects metaphor and strives for direct expression, at times epic, at times didactic. This tribute opens with an unusual comedy, a commissioned work that Bardem punctuates with sporadic yet incisive flashes of socio-political criticism; it then revisits what are now regarded as his major contributions to cinema during the Franco era, along with the co-productions that secured his international reputation. It concludes with two examples of Bardem’s “free” cinema, created in the context of a country moving toward democracy.

Curated by Valeria Camporesi with the assistance of Mercedes Alcalá-Galiano and Raquel Cacho

Felices Pascuas (1954) • Cómicos (1954) • Muerte de un ciclista (Gli egoisti / Death of a Cyclist, 1955) • Calle Mayor (1956) • La venganza (Ho giurato di ucciderti / Vengeance, 1958) • El puente (Il ponte, 1977)