With my ass in the air is the second feature film by the malaguaniat Carles Mira, the filmmaker who most eagerly persevered in building a Valencian cinema with truly popular roots. His vision was clear: "The response of artists and intellectuals to the cultural desert left to us by Francoism has been elite cinema, imitation of other models. There are certain Spanish films whose roots we must look for in Woody Allen, o a Fassbinder, and a Bergman. [Jo try] making films from our own roots, without any shame on the part of the left towards Les Fallas, the parties of Moors and Christians or any other manifestation of that style". Agree with that, his work is irreverent, sensual and playful.
"This second film of mine is a response to the first feature film. Quan is going to explode the bomb in Alcoi [in a projection of The wonderful life of Father Vicente] I tried to investigate a little about the fact. I found out we were “with his ass in the air”; that is to say, that the authorities were still in place and that no one paid any attention. I think that Franco had created a series of ghosts for us, that they scared us and that it was clear that they are here. The film is a bit of an attempt, or an opportunity, so that we can laugh at these ghosts (…) More than scary I would talk about a party, that Party in which, with a lot of alcohol, you start by losing the fear of your inner ghosts and end up standing on the pedestal of the “eternal values”». This vision is substantiated in the film in a diaphanous metaphor: the Transition as a madhouse of provinces.
The film was shot in Llutxent, with the participation of a good number of non-professional interpreters who joined names such as Ovidi Montllor, Joan Monleón or Eva León. In the context of a non-existent business infrastructure in Valencia, it cost little more than 20 millions of pesetas that became almost 150 at the box office. Therefore, gained public support: more than eight hundred thousand spectators came to the theaters to enjoy the insolence and the absurdity. In his own words, of that "cinema that does not want to sway the viewer or redeem him; just seduce him”, that "you don't have to watch on your knees, a danceable cinema, tasty, let it be nailed; a cinema that smells of rudder and onion, that it is sewn by hand and that it can be burned cheerfully at the beginning of each spring", with the aim of "returning to the fair barrack and giving it back its magic".
14.05.26 THURSDAY / 18.00 h Presentation by filmmaker Lluís Rivera
With my ass in the air
Carles look. Spain. 1981. Color. 90′. 35 mm.
Int. Ovidi Montllor, Eva Leon, Maria Jose Arenas, Juan Carlos Senante, Joan Monleón..
A young man from the province meets the singer of a small group. Thanks to her he discovers sex, but the experience gives him such a shock that he will be interned, treated as crazy, in a monastery run by monks.
