THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
Sunday, September 19th at 1:00 p.m. and
Tuesday, September 21st at 7:00 p.m.
ADMISSION: FREE
**Suggested donation: $5.00**
ESSENTIAL CINEMA is The Loft's FREE monthly series of classic art films on the big screen. See old favorites, hidden gems and exciting re-discoveries the way they were meant to be seen - with an audience and on the big screen in glorious 35 mm!
"CLOSE TO MAGIC! One of the most beautiful and arresting films ever made in Spain, or anywhere in the last three decades." - Derek Malcolm, THE GUARDIAN
"AN EXTRAORDINARY FILM. Impossible to forget!"- A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“There are masterpieces that everyone knows and loves, and then there are the cherished gems that seem known only to a lucky few. SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE is one such hidden treasure. The most enchanting and purest poem to childhood in modern cinema.” – Nicolas Rapold, THE NEW YORK SUN
“Arguably the finest and most beautifully wrought first film of the European ‘70s, a mysterious crucible as elusive, concrete, and visually primal as anything by Herzog, Straub, Olmi or Denis." - Michael Atkinson, THE VILLAGE VOICE
Widely regarded as a masterpiece and one of the greatest Spanish films ever made, this allegorical tale, the debut feature from acclaimed director Victor Erice (On the Terrace, The South) is set in a remote village on the desolate Castilian plain in the early 1940s. The life in the village is calm and uneventful -- an allegory of Spanish life after General Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. While their father (Fernando Fernán Gómez) studies bees in the artificial crystal beehive he has created and their mother (Teresa Gimpera) writes emotional letters to a non-existent correspondent, two young sisters, Ana (Ana Torrent) and Isabel (Isabel Telleria), go to see FRANKENSTEIN, the original 1930s Boris Karloff version dubbed into Spanish, at the local town cinema. Though they can hardly understand the film's concepts of death and rebirth, both girls are deeply impressed with the moment when a little girl gives a flower to the monster. Isabel, the older sister, tells Ana that the monster actually exists as a spirit that you can't see unless you know how to approach him. Deeply affected by the film, and looking to escape her troubled home life, Ana begins an incredible adventure wandering the countryside in search of the kind creature.
Haunting, elliptical and poetic, deftly navigating the blurred line between fantasy and reality, the film brilliantly captures not only the aftershocks of a country haunted by Civil War, but also the imaginative (and sometimes dangerous) inner lives of children and the overwhelming, transformative power of cinema. An obvious influence on such later classics as Cinema Paradiso and Pan's Labyrinth, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE was selected in a Time Out (London) poll of directors, actors, programmers and critics as one of the 20th century’s 100 greatest films.