Screening: Vampir-Cuadecuc, Pere Portabella, Spain, 1970, 66 min

Tickets: S$13.50 standard; S$11.50 concession. Purchase at theprojector.sg

Introduction by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media (ADM), NTU

Vampir-Cuadecuc is arguably one of the key films for understanding the transition in the Spanish film world from the period of the “new cinemas” (permitted by the Franco government) towards the illegal, clandestine, or openly antagonistic practices against the Franco regime. The film consists of shooting the filming of a commercial film El Conde Drácula by Jesús Franco. Portabella practices two types of violence on the standard narrative: he totally eliminates colour and substitutes the soundtrack with a landscape of image-sound collisions by Carles Santos. Filmed provocatively in 16mm with sound negative, Vampire-Cuadecuc stages the tensions between the black and white of the film stock, and reveals the “fantasmatic materialism” that dominant narrative cinema is reliant upon.

This Screening is part of the public programme of Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History.