The Holy Innocents is about a family of serfs living on a hacienda in Zafra, Extremadura in Spain (same region seen in Las Hurdes by Buñuel). The film is based on a novel by Miguel Delibes, and the setting is the 1960s but it could just as well be the 1860s.
Thanks to filmmakers Mike Alcazaren and Elvert Bañares, and scholar Marina Diaz for joining our discussion.
It’s been four months since the virus upended our lives. As apocalypses go, it’s been quiet. Sometimes I don’t speak to another person for days. I force myself to walk 4,000 steps a day indoors. Most days I don’t venture past the parking area of my building. I go downstairs to feed the three garage cats and collect packages from motorcycle delivery men (Shopee is my retail therapy: cat food, envelopes, broom, coffee filters, bond paper, etc). Twice I went to the supermarket, and once to the print shop (and then my friend lent me a laser printer so I don’t have to go back). I’ve walked to the drugstore and the convenience store down the street six or seven times.
I would not survive this quarantine without my friends who, knowing my total lack of cooking skills (I gave my stove to my cleaning lady since I never used it anyway), include my grocery list when they shop, send wine and pastry, and let me judge their cooking experiments. I had one fabulous al fresco lunch on a friend’s birthday. The next one will have to wait—covid numbers have risen since the city reopened (and some testing became available), and hospital ICUs are at full capacity.
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This is last Sunday’s Cinemaclub Pelikula discussion of The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice.
To watch The Holy Innocents by Mario Camus today and tomorrow, go to the Instituto Cervantes Vimeo page.
Password: clasicoscontigojulio10
To join the Cineclub Pelikula discussion tomorrow at 5pm, go to
https://zoom.us/j/96949757066
It’s called Utopia Avenue and it’s set in the late 60s music scene.
Dr Marinus shows up again. Is he the Nick Fury of the Mitchellverse? And the guitarist’s name is Jasper de Zoet. While waiting for Utopia Avenue to arrive in local bookstores, review Mitchell’s earlier novels.
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I am in my library, the Klementinium in Prague. Virtually. Not in photo: Jean and Jay, who had to leave before the picture-taking.
We had our Bibliophibians Book Club discussion of The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Thanks again to Honey de Peralta who hounded me, very nicely, to read N.K. Jemisin.
The Fifth Season is the first book of The Broken Earth Trilogy, the first trilogy in history to win three consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Novel.
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Watch The Spirit of the Beehive (in Spanish with English subtitles) online for free this weekend only, right here. The password is clasicoscontigojulio3
Some monsters you imagine, but horror is real
By Jessica Zafra
The first thing you notice about The Spirit of the Beehive is its silence. It has a physical presence. You are always aware of it, because silence is the point: the things we don’t say, the truths we will not utter.
Victor Erice’s 1973 debut begins with the arrival of a traveling cinema in a little town in Spain. It is 1940, and the movie is James Whale’s Frankenstein. Two little girls, Isabel and her wide-eyed little sister, Ana, are in the audience, enraptured.
In their once-grand house, their father tends to his apiary. He writes a letter musing on the frantic activity within the glass beehive—what is it for? Their mother writes to someone she has not seen since the civil war. She rides her bicycle to the station to catch the mail train, whose black-wreathed screams puncture the silence. Their manner is furtive, as if any sudden movement would shatter the inertia.
No one has a conversation, with the exception of the girls, who whisper in their bedroom. Why are they whispering? Who will hear them? I’ve seen Frankenstein’s monster, Isabel claims, in the empty farmhouse with the well. And like many little girls in countless fairy tales, Ana goes to find the monster.
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