2023-12-28 13:36:46
Carles Mir (Barcelona, 1948) publishes The cinemas of my life: Barcelona 1950-1970, account of what cinema was like in those decades and how certain films marked him for the rest of his life. Mir has worked as a film commentator for several publications, radio stations and, for the last twenty years, for BTV, Barcelona’s television station.
He says he was almost born in a cinema.
My mother broke water at the Astorias cinema, on Carrer París in Barcelona. He rushed home and I was born before the midwife arrived.
Has he been to the movies all his life?
In my house we were very cinephiles. Every Sunday I went with my parents to a premiere. There were many cinemas in Barcelona! On Thursdays I went to the local cinema, where I saw two films in a row.
What were your favorite movies?
Many! In my childhood, adventure films like Las minas del rey Salomón, or the Great Houdini. After I was fourteen I realized that in addition to Hollywood there was another type of cinema, European, which I became fond of with Truffaut. Already in my youth I became a follower of Fellini and Berlanga, with films that had been banned by censorship.
If I had to choose one?
I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey eighteen times in the cinema.
Would you say that his book is a requiem, a farewell or a wish for cinema to return to the way it used to be?
To be like before, that is impossible. But it’s not a requiem either, it’s like a nostalgic book, of the nostalgia of my youth and childhood. I was happy
You, who used to be a lover of cinemas, don’t go there anymore?
Not like before. I go to the film library, which is a cinema, although not a commercial one. He does three sessions a day, changing the film every day. I also go to the Renoir on Tuesdays when we over 65 pay 2 euros.
Have you visited the cinemas in Girona? What do you think of them?
I remember the Truffaut cinema, which still exists. It is one of the oldest and visiting it is quite an experience.
What is missing from going to the cinema?
The ritual has been lost. It used to be a ritual, where you brought your snack or dinner, entered at four in the afternoon and left at nine in the evening. You could see the newsreels where Franco was inaugurating some swamp, but there were also movie news, which was what I liked. Going to the cinema was going to see a great show.
It is produced more and today the films are less on the billboard?
There used to be films that stayed on the poster for a whole year, like Lawrence of Arabia. If you didn’t go to see it in that cinema, you didn’t see it, because it didn’t go to another cinema until the end of a year. Then there were buses that came from all over Catalonia to Barcelona just to see the film.
What has changed in the way of watching movies?
As Román Gubern says in the foreword to the book, cinemas used to be great cathedrals and then became small chapels. Now there isn’t even a ticket officethere is a machine or internet.
Will cinemas become extinct in the future?
Cinema is suffering a long agony. But still resists!
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