Lejos de los árboles (Far from the trees). Jacinto Esteva in the MACBA Collection
Lejos de los árboles (Far from the Trees) could have been born and publicized as a denunciation of the atavisms and inertias that still survived in the developmental Spain of the 1960s, but, actually, it revisits one of the central themes of the 20th-century avant-gardes: alterity, the other worlds that are within this one, the Other Side that is here, the doors or trapdoors through which we have access to other hidden or invisible human universes, inhabited by the most opaque dimensions of the human condition. On the other side of the limit are those that we have called primitives, barbarians or savages, but also those that, closer to us, on the outside, embody what is archaic, elemental and, at the same time, boundless. But there are other boundaries, presently the inner ones, from which what is inconceivable is expressed as an immanent part of the very urban life. Trained as an urban planner and architect, with Lejos de los árboles (Far from the Trees) Esteva wanted to help to refute the false divorce between the rural world and the urban one, as well as to reflect differently on the city, showing how the very same forces of diversity and incalculability tossed and turned in it.
Manuel Delgado, El arte de danzar sobre el abismo: Jacinto Esteva.
Jacinto Esteva (1936-1985) was one of the most distinguished members of the Escuela de Barcelona (Barcelona School). As a filmmaker, producer and scriptwriter, his work spanned the 1960s. The project to which he devoted more time and dedication was no doubt Lejos de los árboles (Far from the Trees), a film essay, the production of which lasted from 1963 to 1970. After a series of successive editings, it was shown for the first time in 1972. The version we present on this occasion has been edited again by Pere Portabella, who was the first producer of the film. The ethnographic character of this project brings it close to the Neorealism practiced at that time by photographers such as Oriol Maspons, who was in charge of still photography. On the first floor it is possible to see a broad selection of photographs from the Maspons-Ubiña Studio commissioned by Filmscontacto, the production company founded by Jacinto Esteva. The collection sums up the different campaigns that were needed to gather the rituals of a Spain tied to a rural identity. Another group of photographs show Jacinto Esteva in Africa, once he had become a hunting guide and had given up his relationship with cinema.
Screening times
Length: 63 min
Weekdays: 11:30 am (English Subtitles); 12:50 pm; 14:10 pm (English Subtitles); 15:30 pm; 16:50 pm (English Subtitles); 18:10 pm
Saturdays: 10:10 am; 11:30 am (English Subtitles); 12:50 pm; 14:10 pm (English Subtitles); 15:30 pm; 16:50 pm (English Subtitles); 18:10 pm
Sundays and holidays: 10:10 am; 11:30 am (English Subtitles); 12:50 am
