Joseph Morder. Diaries of Madrid
Joseph Morder (Trinidad and Tobago, 1949) is a film-maker and diarist whose Super-8 films are a monument to experimentation and film as a way of life. This programme, comprising three, single-screening sessions, unveils three of his films on the city of Madrid and its people, neighbourhoods, history and lives: Niños, niñas (Malasaña) (Boys, Girls [Malasaña], 1978), L’Été madrilène (The Madrid Summer, 1978) and La Gran Vía de Rita Jones (The Gran Vía of Rita Jones, 1996). The film-maker will be in attendance at all three screenings.
Morder has always occupied an unorthodox space. With ties to avant-garde film cooperatives from 1970s France — Paris Films Coop, Collectif Jeune Cinéma — and film-makers such as Marguerite Duras, Alain Cavalier, Teo Hernández, Marcel Hanoun and Dominique Noguez, he has never belonged to any one group, participating instead to show his films and watch those made by other artists from a peripheral place.
From a young age he dreamed of making films of a similar ilk to much-admired film-makers like Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli and Fritz Lang; namely, in the classical Hollywood tradition. At the tender age of eighteen, and newly arrived in Paris from Ecuador, Morder filmed his first Super-8 films: life stories and fragments made with friends and relatives. With a solid command of narration and editing from the outset, he was never concerned with avant-garde experimentation or the perfect technical mastery of his medium.
A tireless film archivist, traveller, writer and hardened cinephile with a love of Spanishness in all its forms, Morder has endeavoured to love film as someone loves life. In approaching his filmography, twelve hundred films strong, to date, we encounter a tenacious figure who is able to make a diary and film in each of his trips around the world.
Programa
Joseph Morder and Dominique Delcourt. Niños, niñas (Malasaña) (Boys, Girls [Malasaña])
France, 1978, colour, without sound, Super-8 transferred to DA, 36´
— With a presentation by Joseph Morder and Adrián García. Live music from Javi Álvarez
In this multi-channel, two-screen film we see images shot single-mindedly by film-makers Joseph Morder and Dominique Delcourt, as if they were seeing the world for the first time. Each image takes on new meaning as it meets the adjacent one, a play of entrances and exits, of clues, that make the film a temporary discrepancy between our gaze and images. On one side, the era and place in which it is set: Spain 1978, for an intended, target generation; for another — younger — starting point. On the other, the narration of a trip to Madrid: an account of pages torn out of a logbook, notes and sketches of the spaces and bodies that inhabit a city. Beyond everything, testimony to a friendship that is reaffirmed in the joint desire to film. The screening also features live music by artist Javi Álvarez, put together expressly for this work.
Sabatini Building, Auditorium
144 people
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior ticket collection at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website. A maximum of 2 per person. Doors open 30 minutes before the screening
Joseph Morder. L’Été madrilène (The Madrid Summer)
France, 1978, colour, original version in French with live commentary from the director, Super-8, 90´
— With a presentation by Joseph Morder and screening by Jorge Suárez-Quiñones
This episode, the first of seven that make up Joseph Morder’s film diary, records the film-maker’s first trip to Madrid and his return to France, with his friend Dominique Delcourt. Morder’s own voice-over — live in this screening — guides the viewer in his discoveries and flashes of light, filmed with the delicacy of Super-8 and the vibrant colours of Kodachrome. In Morder’s words: “[…] before the trip I decided to introduce a voice-over into the diary which would mix with the live sound of the sequences. The first images record the road trip to the film festival of La Rochelle with Gerard Courant. Afterwards, I travelled to Madrid with my friend Dominique. The amazing thing was that the new form of the diary coincided with this experience and had a profound effect on both of us. This experience has become hugely important in my life. Being in other places, I always recall the Madrid I filmed in 1978. And so, after that trip, the diary began to take on a non-fictional form but by chapters, each one with a title of fiction”.
Sabatini Building, Auditorium
144 people
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior ticket collection at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website. A maximum of 2 per person. Doors open 30 minutes before the screening
Joseph Morder. La Gran Vía de Rita Jones (The Gran Vía of Rita Jones)
France, 1996, colour, original version in French with Spanish subtitles, DA, 47´
— With a presentation by Joseph Morder
A film shot solely on Madrid’s Gran Vía in a heartfelt homage to the history, architecture and memory of the city through this street. The voice-over of a woman leads a narrative in which the avenue becomes an enthralling space, and with the protagonist and her grandmother, Rita Jones, we cross the twentieth century and its tragedies. Joseph Morder films demonstrations, faces in the crowd, posters, buildings, statues and facades once more. Every edit and camera movement is precise, combining with music and voice-over to the rhythm of the story.
Sabatini Building, Auditorium
144 people
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior ticket collection at the Museo’s Ticket Offices or on the Museo Reina Sofía website. A maximum of 2 per person. Doors open 30 minutes before the screening