When I was sixteen, I saw Marcel Hanoun's film Octobre à Madrid on television. It was both a revelation to me and how I learned about the existence of the film diary in cinema. When I started filmmaking two years later, I did so in the form of a diary. A few years later, I met Marcel Hanoun, who became my spiritual father in cinema. We shared several filmmaking adventures together. That was also when I discovered Spain, and Madrid in particular. In October 2014, on the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting of Octobre à Madrid, I made a tribute to Hanoun's film in Madrid. It includes vacation footage shot in the summer of 1970 called Viaje a España, a trip marked by the Franco dictatorship and references to Luis Buñuel, Sergei Mikhailovich Einsenstein and other filmmakers.
50 years of ‘Octobre à Madrid’ (Film Diary) is the story of my relationship with Marcel Hanoun, with Spain and with Madrid. It is like a secret whispered to someone I share an intimate bond with: the audience.
Joseph Morder
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