Angélica [a tragedy]
(Angélica [una tragedia])
Manuel Fernández-Valdés / Spain / 2016 / 83 min
Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival
Doclisboa
Ourense International Film Festival
Festival/Tokyo
Pricing
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Spanish with English subtitles
With Angélica Liddell
Recipient of important awards in Spain and abroad, Angélica Liddell’s dramaturgy is considered one of the most avant-garde in contemporary European theater. As Liddell starts working on her new play, director Manuel Fernández-Valdés decides to capture her rehearsal process on camera.
The hallmarks of Liddell’s autobiographical work are social criticism, heartrending expressionism, purity, and the search for meaning through pain and subversion. These characteristics affect the essence of her working method and the people who work with her. Each one of them, including Fernández-Valdés, must decide how far they are willing to go.
Angélica [a tragedy] is an insightful look at the theater stage process, the devotion to art, and the troubled relationship between creation and life.
Related Subjects
About the Director
Press
“The Spanish actress/writer/director has been an emotional force through her dramatic works, which tear apart intellectual pretensions with brutal precision. Manuel Fernández-Valdés’ documentary marks the first time that Liddell has allowed cameras into her rehearsal process…A strong optional purchase.” – P. Hall, VIDEOLIBRARIAN
“The most powerful, audacious, sincere, lucid and intelligent of the artists that appeared in recent times.” – Le Figaro
“Violent, provocative, impudent and blasphemous, her work shakes the stones.” – Le Monde
“You can blame her for everything you want, except that she is anodyne.” – Libération
“Angelica Liddell has become her own character, it is impossible to separate her life from her work. She is the suicidal who never dare to commit suicide; she lives from and in her wound, amused and disgusted by it at the same time in the same way that she loves and hates herself.” – Ana Vidal Egea, Professor City University of New York, Writer “The Theater of Angélica Liddell (1988-2009)"
“The documentary portrays how the intimate pain that Liddell’s autobiographical theater gathers affects not only her, but also everybody working with her. Each of them has to decide how far are they willing to go. ” – Gacetin Madrid
Notes on the Film
Angélica in not a film about how an artist rehearses her work, but of how she rehearses her life; alone in front of the mirror.
Manuel Fernández-Valdéz, Director