Catalogue > At random

The film was commissioned by the Galeria Maeght for the Joan Miró exhibit organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs in the Grand Palais in Paris that opened on May 17, 1974. The film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (the Miró country home) and in Tarragona during the process of elaboration of an original tapestry for eight months using 1200 kilos of wool and 600 kilos for the warp. The tapestry was 6 meters wide and 11 meters long and weighed a total of 3,500 kilos. A special loom had tobe built to weave it. The day the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were attacked, September 11, 2001, the tapestry was hanging in the hall of the one of the towers and was destroyed along with it.

Ever since the 1960s, Pere Portabella involved himself in the movements against the Franco dictatorship and in support of liberties. In 1977, he was elected senator in the first democratic elections, and took part in the drafting of the Spanish constitution (1978). Since 2001, he has chaired the Fundación Alternativas. Before working as a director, with Films 59, he produced some of the most emblematic spanish films: Los golfos (1959) by Carlos Saura, El cochecito (1960) by Marco Ferreri and Viridiana (1961) by Luis Buñuel wich provoked a scandal that obliged him to move to Italy. In 1964, he wrote the screenplay for Il momento della verità with Francesco Rosi. He began directing in 1967 with No compteu amb els dits followed by his first feature-length film, Nocturno 29 (1968). Vampir-Cuadeduc (1970) is a key work in his filmography, togheter with Umbracle (1972), represents a phase of radical rupture with the production of those years and marked him as one of the most original forces in underground and avantgarde cinema of the time. After Informe General of 1976 he only returned to directing in 1989, with Pont de Varsòvia. In 2001, his films became part of the collection of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA). In 2002, he was the only Spanish artist to be invited to Documenta 11 in Kassel. In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) acquires a copy of Vampir-Cuadecuc and Die Stille vor Bach (2007).