FAR FROM THE TREES

"[An] impressionistic travelogue that shows a Spain far from the beaten paths of the tourist resorts … a perfect successor to Luis Buñuel's Land Without Bread." – Letterboxd

A documentary on the cultural and religious customs of director Jacinto Esteva Grewe's native Catalonia, Far from the Trees is one of the most controversial works to have emerged from the Escuela de Barcelona. Shot in the twilight of fascist rule, the film depicts both the joy and brutality of traditional life; the communal atmosphere of carnivals interspersed with occasionally hair-raising scenes of public self-flagellation, donkey sacrifice, demonic possession and the violence of the bullfight.

Boldly depicting the less-than-glamorous aspects of rural life, Far from the Trees endured production delays for several years due to ongoing censorship by government authorities. Both ethnographic and neorealist in nature, it remains a startling and lyrical document of a lost world.

"Revisits one of the central themes of the 20th-century avant-gardes: alterity, the other worlds that are within this one, the Other Side that is here, the doors or trapdoors through which we have access to other hidden or invisible human universes, inhabited by the most opaque dimensions of the human condition." – Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

Print courtesy of Filmoteca de Catalunya