19:00
BARQ Festival / Filming Barcelona’s Periphery through Fiction Cinema
More info
Organizes
Centre Obert d’Arquitectura
Place
Sala d'Actes
Plaça Nova 5, first floor
Barcelona
Time
At 7 PM
Price
Free
Co-organized with
How has fiction cinema portrayed Barcelona’s working-class neighborhoods and periphery?
Taking as case studies the filming of two recently produced films, El 47 and La furgo, we will reflect on how the most contemporary Catalan fiction cinema has sought to portray, in a more authentic way, another Barcelona. It is the city that does not interest tourists, far removed from the “postcard” image of Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
These two films, through their stories, have led us to rediscover a Barcelona on the margins of gentrification, trendy monocultural venues, and ostentatious modernity — a more authentic, diverse, and plural Barcelona.
Guided by Marta Bazaco (production designer of El 47) and Eloy Calvo (director of La furgo), we will delve into the challenges of capturing the personality of such emblematic neighborhoods as Torre Baró, Vilapicina i la Torre Llobeta, Montbau, and Sant Martí de Provençals, and of the communities that inhabit them, without falling into stereotyped or stigmatized imaginaries. The stories told in these two films would not be the same without the architectural and urban character of the neighborhoods where they were shot, nor without their residents. All these elements form a splendid backdrop that helps to vindicate and make visible that another Barcelona exists.
Parallel activity of the 4th edition of the BARQ Festival.
Eloy Calvo
He is a film director and storyboard artist. Born in Terrassa, he studied directing at ESCAC and illustration and comics at Escola Joso. La Furgo (2025) is his feature debut as a fiction director. He directed and wrote the documentary Carretera a Gusen (2023), the short documentary Housing First: A New Roof (2016), and the short documentary Japan: Imagined Visions (2011). He also directed and wrote the fiction short film Waste Days (2014).
Marta Bazaco
With a degree in Audiovisual Communication from Universitat Ramon Llull, she began her career as a production designer and trained in set drawing at Pinewood Studios (London) with Terry Ackland-Snow. She designs sets while teaching at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and combines her creative work with motherhood. She was nominated for designing the recreation of the Torre Baró neighborhood in the 1950s and 1970s for El 47, by both the Catalan Film Academy and the Spanish Film Academy. She is a member of both academies and of the AEDAA. She is currently developing Journey to the Land of the Whites, to be filmed between Barcelona and Luxembourg.