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Friday, October 7 / Museo Reina Sofía. Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400
Opening session
Communists (Kommunisten, 2014, 70 min., HD archive)
The Algerian War! (La Guerre d'Algérie!, 2014, 2 min., HD archive)
With introduction of Giorgio Passerone, Christophe Claver and the curators of the series. Due to health reasons, the presence of Jean-Marie Straub is canceled.
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Saturday, October 8 / Museo Reina Sofía, Auditorio Sabatini
Session 1
Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968, 93 min., HD archive)
Introduction: José Luis Téllez
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Sunday, October 9 and Tuesday, October 25 / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Sesión 2
Machorka-Muff (1963, 18 min., DCP)
Not Reconciled or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules (Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht, 1965, 55 min., DCP)
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Tuesday, October 11 - 9:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 16, 5:30 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 3
Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times or Perhaps One Day Rome Will Permit Herself to Choose in Her Turn (Othon) (Les yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer ou Peut-être qu'un jour Rome se permettra de choisir à son tour (Othon), 1970, 88 min., DCP)
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Thursday, October 13 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 4
The Bridegroom, the Actress and the Pimp (Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter, 1968, 23 min., HD archive)
Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice (Toute révolution est un coup de dés, 1977, 10 min., HD archive)
Introduction: Paulino Viota
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Friday, October 14 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 5
History Lessons (Geschichtsunterricht, 1972, 85 min., HD archive)
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Saturday, October 15 / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 6
Introduction to Arnold Schoenburg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene” (Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene, 1973, 15 min., DCP)
Moses and Aaron (Moses und Aron, 1975, 105 min., DCP)
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Wednesday, October 19 - 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 23 - 9:30 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 7
Jackals and Arabs (Schakale und Araber, 2011, 11 min., DCP)
Fortini/Cani (Fortini/Cani, 1976, 83 min., DCP)
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Thursday, October 20 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 8
From the Cloud to the Resistance (Dalla nube alla resistenza, 1979, 105 min., HD archive)
Introduction: Ana Useros and Miriam Martín
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Friday, October 21 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 9
Too Early, Too Late (Zu früh, zu spät — Trop tôt, trop tard — Troppo presto, troppo tardi, 1981, 100 min., HD archive)
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Saturday, October 22 - 7:00 p.m. and Tuesday, November 22 - 7:30 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 10
En Rachâchant (1983, 7 min., 35 mm)
Class Relations (Klassenverhältnisse, 1984, 130 min., 35 mm)
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Wednesday, October 26. Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 2, 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, October 30, Sala 1, 7:30 p.m.
Session 11
The Death of Empedocles or When the Green of the Earth Will Glisten for You Anew (Der Tod des Empedokles oder Wenn dann der Erde grün von neuem euch ergläntz, 1987, 132 min., 35 mm)
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Thursday, October 27 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 12
Proposition in Four Parts (Proposta in quattro parti, 1985, 41 min., HD archive)
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Friday, October 28 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 13
Cézanne. Conversation with Joachim Gasquet (Cézanne. Dialogue avec Joachim Gasquet, 1990, 51 min., 35 mm)
A Visit to the Louvre (Une visite au Louvre, 2004, 48 min., 35 mm)
Introduction: Natalia Ruiz
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Saturday, October 29. Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1 - 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday, November 8, Sala 2 - 9:00 p.m.
Session 14
Black Sin (Schwarze Sünde, 1989, 42 min., 35 mm)
Introduction: Manuel Asín
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Wednesday, November 2 - 5:30 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1 and Sunday, November 6 - 8:00 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 2
Session 15
The Antigone of Sophocles After Hölderlin’s Translation Adapted for the Stage by Brecht 1948 (Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht 1948, 1992, 100 min., 35 mm)
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Thursday, November 3 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 16
From Today until Tomorrow (Von heute auf morgen, 1997, 62 min., 35 mm, original version with French subtitles)
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Friday, November 4 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 17
Sicilia! (1998, 66 min., 35 mm, original version with French subtitles)
Introduction: Santos Zunzunegui
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Saturday, November 5 - 7:00 p.m. and Tuesday, November 15 - 7:30 h / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 18
The Wayfarer (Il viandante, 2001, 5 min., DCP)
The Knife Sharpener (L’arrotino, 2001, 7 min., DCP)
Workers, Peasants (Operai, contadini, 2001, 123 min., 35 mm)
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Tuesday, November 8 - 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 13 - 9:30 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 19
The Return of the Prodigal Son (Il ritorno del figlio prodigo, 2003, 29 min., 35 mm original version with French subtitles)
Humiliated: That Nothing Produced or Touched by Them, Coming From their Hands, Proves Free from the Claim of Some Stranger (Workers, Peasants— Continuation and End) (Umiliati: che niente di fatto o toccato da loro, di uscito dalle mani loro, risultasse esente dal diritto di qualche estraneo (Operai, contadini — seguito e fine), 2003, 35 min., 35 mm, original version with French subtitles)
Dolando (2003, 7 min., DCP)
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Thursday, November 10 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 20
Incantati (2003, 6 min., HD archive)
These Encounters of Theirs (Quei loro incontri, 2006, 68 min., 35 mm)
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Friday, November 11 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 21
Europa 2005, 27 October (Europa 2005, 27 octobre, 2006, 11 min., HD archive)
Joachim Gatti (2009, 1 min. 30 sec., HD archive)
Corneille-Brecht or Rome, the Only Object of My Resentment (Corneille-Brecht ou Rome, l'unique objet de mon resentiment, 2009, 27 min., HD archive)
Oh, Supreme Light (O somma luce, 2010, 18 min., HD archive)
Introduction: Jenaro Talens
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Saturday, November 12 / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 22
Artemide’s Knee (Le Genou d'Artémide, 2008, 26 min., 35 mm)
The Witches / Women Among Themselves (Le streghe — Femmes entre elles, 2009, 21 min., 35 mm)
The Inconsolable One (L'Inconsolable, 2011, 15 min., DCP)
The Mother (2012, 19 min., DCP)
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Wednesday, November 16 - 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 20 - 15:30 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 23
Lothringen! (1994, 21 min., 35 mm)
Itinerary of Jean Bricard (Itinéraire de Jean Bricard, 2008, 40 min., 35 mm)
An Heir (Un héritier, 2011, 20 min., DCP)
Concerning Venice (History Lessons) (À propos de Venise (Geschichtsunterricht), 2014, 23 min., DCP)
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Thursday, November 17 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 24
A Tale by Michel de Montaigne (Un conte de Michel de Montaigne, 2013, 34 min., HD archive)
Dialogue of Shadows (Dialogue d'ombres, 2014, 28 min., HD archive)
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Friday, November 18 / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 25
Communists (Kommunisten, 2014, 70 min., HD archive)
The Algerian War! (La Guerre d'Algérie!, 2014, 2 min., HD archive)
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Saturday, November 19 - 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday, November 22, 10:00 p.m. / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré. Sala 1
Session 26
The Aquarium and the Nation (L’Aquarium et la nation, 2015, 31 min., DCP)
Introduction: Albert Serra (November 19 only)
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet
To Make the Revolution Also Means to Put Back Into Place Things that Are Very Ancient But Forgotten
Held on 07, 08, 09, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31 oct, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 nov 2016
Museo Reina Sofía presents, in collaboration with Filmoteca Española, a comprehensive retrospective on the film-makers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The series, comprising works spanning from 1962 to the present day, reflects one of the most cohesive and relevant film projects in the 20th century, whereby cinema is both an artistic form and a way of politically bursting forth in the present. Engaging in dialogue with Jean-Marie Straub, the series includes new translations of the vast majority of the films, original format screenings, remastered copies, a significant number of premieres in Spain, and a new publication featuring essays on the film-makers.
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet are a key reference point in the field of cinema and contemporary art. Distantly inseparable in one part of the French Nouvelle Vague (Rivette, Godard, Moullet) and on the margins of New German Cinema, the production of their early films was divided between Germany, Italy and France, characterising a filmography shot in three countries and in different languages. This trait would not only distinguish the scope of their work in the aesthetic and political debates at the time, it would also set out a profound reflection on history, identity and European borders.
The poetics of Straub-Huillet adhere to the technical origins of film, whilst also readying us for a new relationship with the world’s sounds and images. Their work, like that of those they greatly admired - Cézanne, Griffith, Mallarmé, Chaplin and Schoenberg - opens up new pathways. Both figure among those to have obdurately reformulated what a new art, an art that starts, could become, while retracing a brief history of film before moving back to the point that is transformed in its inception. In the origins of their films we find artistic works – dramas, novels, music, music scores and paintings – rather than scripts, works that the directors reappropriate, uproot from their cultural contexts (Classical Antiquity, the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, post-war Europe…), and place in the present as a critical event; they are destined not to be translated into a new language, but to be received and interpreted as an emancipatory tool for their new audiences. In the films of Straub-Huillet texts, works and images form a sequence that describes a revolutionary pedagogy of culture and history throughout time.
Following the death of Danièle Huillet in 2006, Jean-Marie Straub continues to work, upholding filmic poetics such as rupture and revelation, with his recent films, some of which will be shown for the first time in Spain in this film season. These works demonstrate social conflicts, citizen repression and the violence of power as they continue to explore the limits of representation on a political and artistic level.
In collaboration with
Filmoteca Española
Curatorship
Chema González and Manuel Asín
Itinerary
CGAI-Filmoteca de Galicia (December 29, 2016 - February 22, 2017)
TABAKALERA - Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporánea, Donostia / San Sebastián (January 13 - March 31, 2017)
Filmoteca Cantabria (August 30, 2017 - October 1, 2017)
La Filmoteca - Institut Valencià de Cultura (January 9, 2018 - February 7, 2018)
NUMAX, S. Coop. Galega (February 6, 2018 - December, 2018)
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Itinerancies
CGAI, Centro Galego de Artes da Imaxe
29 December, 2016 - 22 February, 2017
Tabakalera
13 January, 2017 - 31 March, 2017
La Filmoteca - Institut Valencià de Cultura
9 January, 2018 - 7 February, 2018
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
The (legal) person and the legal form. Chapter II
8, 12, 15 January, 2026 – 16:00 to 19:00
As part of the Studies Constellation, the Study Directoship’s annual fellowship, art historian and theorist Sven Lütticken leads the seminar The (Legal) Person and the Legal Form: Theoretical, Artistic, and Activist Commitments to foster dialogue and deepen the hypotheses and questions driving his research project.
This project, titled Unacting Personhood, Deforming Legal Abstraction, explores the dominance of real abstractions—such as exchange value and legal form—over our processes of subjectivation, and asks how artistic practices can open up alternative ways of representing or performing the subject and their legal condition in the contemporary world.
The seminar consists of eight sessions, divided into three chapters throughout the academic year. While conceived as non-public spaces for discussion and collective work, these sessions complement, nourish, and amplify the public program of the Studies Constellation.
In this second chapter of the seminar, the inquiry into the aesthetics and politics of legal form continues with three sessions that pick up the discussions held in Chapter I but propose new lines of flight. The first session focuses on international law via the writings of the British author China Miéville, which allows us to reconsider the notion of the legal form –following Evgeny Pashukanis— and, through it, a variety of (people’s) tribunals. While the crucial concept of the legal person –as the right-holder central to the form of law— was debated in Chapter I, the second session focuses on attempts to extend personhood not (just) to corporations, but rather to nonhuman animals or ecosystems. Finally, the third session poses the question: how can groups and networks use officially recognized organizational forms (such as the foundation or the cooperative) and/or use a collective persona (without necessarily a legal “infrastructure” to match) to act and represent themselves?
Oliver Laxe. HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you
Tuesday, 16 December 2025 – 7pm
As a preamble to the opening of the exhibition HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, film-maker Oliver Laxe (Paris, 1982) engages in conversation with the show’s curators, Julia Morandeira and Chema González, touching on the working processes and visual references that articulate this site-specific project for the Museo Reina Sofía. The installation unveils a new programme in Space 1, devoted from this point on to projects by artists and film-makers who conduct investigations into the moving image, sound and other mediums in their exhibition forms.
Oliver Laxe’s film-making is situated in a resilient, cross-border territory, where the material and the political live side by side. In HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, this drift is sculpted into a search for the transcendency that arises between dancing bodies, sacred architectures and landscapes subjected to elemental and cosmological forces. As a result, this conversation seeks to explore the relationship the piece bears to the imagery of ancient monotheisms, the resonance of Persian Sufi literature and the role of abstraction as a resistance to literal meaning, as well as looking to analyse the possibilities of the image and the role of music — made here in collaboration with musician David Letellier, who also works under the pseudonym Kangding Ray — in this project.
These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.
Manuel Correa. The Shape of Now
13 DIC 2025
The Shape of Now is a documentary that explores the challenges and paradoxes of memory, reparation and post-conflict justice, extending a defiant and questioning gaze towards the six-decade armed conflict in which the Colombian State, guerrillas and paramilitary groups clashed to leave millions of victims in the country. The screening is conducted by the Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics study group and includes a presentation by and discussion with the film’s director, Manuel Correa.
The film surveys the consequences of the peace agreements signed in 2016 between the Colombian State and the FARC guerrilla organisation through the optics of different victims. It was recorded shortly after this signing, a time in which doubts lingered over the country’s future, with many groups speculating in the narration. Correa harnesses the power of images, visual and bodily memory, fiction and re-staging as tools for understanding the conflict, memory and healing, as well as for the achievement of a just peace that acknowledges and remembers all victims.
The activity is framed inside the research propelled by Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics, a study group developed by the Museo’s Study Directorship and Study Centre. This annual group seeks to rethink, from a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic perspective, the complex framework of concepts and exercises which operate under the notion of pacifism. A term that calls on not only myriad practices ranging from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to activism for non-violence, but also opens topical debates around violence, justice, reparation and desertion.
Framed in this context, the screening seeks to reflect on propositions of transitional and anti-punitive justice, and on an overlapping with artistic and audiovisual practices, particularly in conflicts that have engendered serious human rights violations. In such conflicts, the role played by audiovisual productions encompasses numerous challenges and ethical, aesthetic and political debates, among them those related to the limits of representation, the issue of revictimisation and the risks involved in the artistic commitment to justice. These themes will be addressed in a discussion held after the session.
Francisco López and Barbara Ellison
Thursday, 11 December - 8pm
The third session in the series brings together two international reference points in sound art in one evening — two independent performances which converse through their proximity here. Barbara Ellison opens proceedings with a piece centred on the perceptively ambiguous and the ghostly, where voices, sounds and materials become spectral manifestations.
This is followed by Francisco López, an internationally renowned Spanish sound artist, who presents one of his radical immersions in deep listening, with his work an invitation to submerge oneself in sound matter as a transformative experience.
This double session sets forth an encounter between two artists who, from different perspectives, share the same search: to open ears to territories where sound becomes a poetic force and space of resistance.
Long Live L’Abo! Celluloid and Activism
4, 5, 6 DIC 2025
The third instalment of Cinema Commons, a research, programming and publishing project which explores how film articulates interpretive communities, fosters collective debate and devises proposals for common spaces, presents L’Abominable, an artist- and film-maker-run independent film-lab founded in 1996 on the outskirts of Paris. The programme is structured around three sessions: a lecture-workshop on L’Abominable, conducted by film-makers Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abominable; and the feature-length film Une île et une nuit (An Island and One Night), made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.
Better known by the shortened version of L’Abo, the artist-run laboratory emerged in response to disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and endeavours to offer the creative community a self-managed space in which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super8, 16mm and 35mm. With this underpinning, L’Abo champions the aesthetic and political experimentation of analogue cinema opposite digital hegemony.
L'Abominable, more than a simple work tool, has become a space of artistic and social exchange which has knitted together a community. It is characterised by endowing technique with a poetic dimension, in a community that manufactures its own film devices, and situates pedagogy at its core — the film-makers and artists train one another on common ground. Further, it seeks to forge an opening to all experimental languages around celluloid, for instance installation and film performance, while constituting a place of preservation and conservation in the history of the medium.
L'Abominable is an example of how, at the height of the digital age, artists and film-makers are recovering cinematography and vindicating the production process in its entirety. This autonomy invents alternative routes in the industry as it creates new tools, develops other forms of expression and explores unknown cinematic territories.