Octobre à Madrid

Marcel Hanoun spent several years in Spain in the early '60s. He traveled the country end to end and fell in love with a culture trapped between force and reason. He shot several short films about popular traditions (from bullfights to processions) and without meaning to, his way of making cinema changed forever. It is unsurprising then that he should wish to render tribute to a city that opened up a whole new world for him. And yet, Octobre à Madrid is no urban symphony; it is instead, among the first film essays in history, one in which a filmmaker questions how to finish a film (entitled Carmen) while walking through a city that instills ever greater doubt. How to film life without manipulating it? How to create a truth by means of an invention? How can a city be made into a metaphor for filmmaking?

> Introduction by Javier Rebollo