The film's opening flamenco dancing scene was fabulous. Can understand why Ava fell in love with it, and Spain, in general.
shareAgreed. Saw this movie at the BFI southbank screening and this was one of the scenes that really showed off how beautiful Cardiff's cinematography is, and how much it can add to a spectacle like flamenco dancing.
shareOutstanding and wonderfully photographed. What a pity there seems to be hardly any information to be had on the magical La Pillina.
shareI found this much, but it's written in Spanish!
http://www.elartedevivirelflamenco.com/bailaores195.html
Flamenco dancing in a village of La Costa Brava in 1930 seems as out of place as a Eskimo in Texas.
I was going to say the same.
shareI know that's hyperbole but why so hard to believe? Flamenco is from southern Spain in the 1700's. By the 1930's, in a town catering to moneyed tourists surely it would have migrated part way across the country.
When there are two, one betrays-Jean-Pierre Melville
It's hard to believe because if you were a Catalan you'd knew well that in 1930, in a small coastal village far from the big cities, as it was then Tossa, the only flamenco that the locals might have witnessed was from silent movies and would have been seen there as exotic folklore from a remote country.
"Spain=the country of flamenco, sun and bullraces" is an slogan for clueless tourists that began only in the fifties when the Francoist regime tried to 'sell' that false image of Spain to the world, mainly for political reasons but also as a bait for the international tourism.
My dears, the greatest flamenco dancer, Carmen Amaya, hailed from the Somorrostro slum of Barcelona. She was dancing as early as 1923 in the waterfront taverns in Barcelona.
Thank you all for your information. Pandora was on this past Saturday and I loved it more than ever.
"No, I don't like to cook, but I have a chicken in the icebox, and you're eating it."