ALCINE is firing up its projectors and launching the new season of ALCINE Club on September 16 and 17 at Teatro Salón Cervantes with a double bill devoted to two classics of Spanish cinema that turned a very familiar problem — finding a home — into compelling cinema: El pisito, directed by Marco Ferreri and based on the novel of the same name by Rafael Azcona, and El inquilino, by José Antonio Nieves Conde, starring Fernando Fernán Gómez.
Both screenings will also turn the spotlight towards November. As has become customary at these events, ALCINE will take the opportunity to give audiences an in-person preview of some of the new features of ALCINE 55, the Alcalá de Henares / Community of Madrid Film Festival, which this year will take place from November 5 to 15. Pedro Toro, the festival’s artistic director, will host the sessions and offer a first glimpse of this new edition, which will once again fill cinemas and streets with music, exhibitions, encounters with industry professionals and, of course, the very best stories in short-film format, along with other surprises still to be revealed.
Wednesday, September 16 will see the screening of El pisito (1958), one of Rafael Azcona’s major works. This year marks the centenary of his birth, as well as 20 years since his visit to Alcalá de Henares. Written by Azcona himself together with Marco Ferreri and based on his novel of the same name, the film turned the struggle to find a home into a dark comedy so uncomfortable that, almost seven decades later, it remains strikingly relevant.
Rodolfo and Petrita have been together for twelve years, but they need a flat before they can get married. Their inability to find one leads them to a desperate solution: Rodolfo must marry Doña Martina, the elderly woman whose home he sublets, so that he can inherit the property when she dies.
Directed by Marco Ferreri — with Isidoro M. Ferry credited as co-director due to the legal requirements of the time — and starring Mary Carrillo, José Luis López Vázquez, Concha López Silva and Celia Conde, El pisito received the FIPRESCI Prize and a Special Jury Mention at the 1958 Locarno Film Festival.
The film will be introduced (at the first screening only) by Julia Sabina, writer, professor at the University of Alcalá and an expert on the work of Rafael Azcona. Screenings will take place on Wednesday, September 16 at 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm at Teatro Salón Cervantes (7 Cervantes Street).
The day after El pisito, on Thursday, September 17, ALCINE Club will bring back El inquilino (1957), directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde and starring Fernando Fernán Gómez and María Rosa Salgado, alongside José Marco Davó and Manuel Alexandre.
The screening will give ALCINE fans the opportunity to discover not only the film itself, but also its remarkable history. ALCINE Club will screen the restoration produced by Filmoteca Española from the uncensored version created by Nieves Conde himself in 1993, which the filmmaker regarded as the original version of his work. The restoration, carried out by Filmoteca Española’s Carlos Saura Centre for Film Preservation and Restoration, also includes additional material offering further insight into the recovery of the film.
In El inquilino, a married couple with four children face eviction as the building they live in is about to be demolished. While Evaristo, played by Fernando Fernán Gómez, and Marta unsuccessfully search for an alternative home, turning to estate agents, banks and property developers, the demolition continues around them. Released almost seventy years ago, the film placed the desperate search for housing at the heart of a story shaped by Nieves Conde’s social perspective. This year also marks 20 years since the director’s death.
The screenings will take place on Thursday, September 17 at 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm at Teatro Salón Cervantes and will conclude with a discussion on the film’s restoration process. The film will be introduced by Pelayo Sánchez, critic, lecturer and programmer at Filmoteca Española.
With this double bill, ALCINE Club resumes its programme and sets the stage for the festival’s upcoming edition. Following a 54th edition that welcomed more than 35,000 spectators and expanded its film, industry, educational and cultural programme, ALCINE now begins the countdown to its 55th edition.
