The Quince Tree Sun
@ NEIU
3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave, Chicago, IL 60646
Opening Wednesday, July 26th, from 7PM - 10PM
THE QUINCE TREE SUN
Directed by Víctor Erice • 1992
In Spanish and Polish with English subtitles
During the autumn of 1990, Spanish artist Antonio López García began to paint a quince tree growing in his garden as its boughs were flush with fruit. Alongside him was acclaimed director Víctor Erice (best known for his feature debut The Spirit of the Beehive) and a small crew, filming López as he painted. For the most part unscripted and unplanned, The Quince Tree Sun was Erice’s third feature in as many decades and found the director adapting his expressionistic visual style and oblique narrative approach to nonfiction cinema. The film would prove to be a hit with cinephiles, racking up festival awards and garnering Erice the best reviews of his career to date. (The 82-year-old director wrapped production on his fourth feature last year.) Unfolding in a series of mostly static, beautifully sunlit 35mm compositions (along with occasional Betacam footage captured after the production ran out of money for film stock), The Quince Tree Sun eschews talking heads, direct address, and all other forms of contextualization de rigueur for conventional hagiographic artist docs, instead favoring a granular focus on the work López does as a painter alongside numerous digressions into his associates’ lives. Ample screen time is afforded to López’s family, neighbors, artistic confidants, and the group of Polish contractors renovating his building as each follows their own path, often oblivious to the intense expenditure of creative energy happening mere feet away. Friends stop by to drink and sing songs, López’s daughters bring him a pair of shoes to try on, his wife goes about working on her own paintings, the news reports on unrest in the Middle East. All the while, López follows his arboreal muse and patiently tries to capture an image of his favorite tree before it loses its fruit and leaves at the end of the season. (CW)
136 min • Maria Moreno P.C. • 35mm from Facets, permission Camm Cinco S.L.
Co-presented with Pentimenti Productions
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Tags: Albany Park, Antonio López García, Chicago, Chicago Film Society, NEIU, Pentimenti Productions, The Quince Tree Sun, Víctor Erice
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