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Monday, 11 September 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Monday, 25 September 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 1. José María Berzosa. Les pompiers de Santiago (The Firefighters of Santiago)
France, 1977, colour, original version in Spanish, DA, 75’
– Presented by Chema González and Daniel Berzosa, the film-maker’s son, in the first session
This first episode in the series addresses the ostensible normality of reactionary ideology among Chile’s middle class, represented by the Fourth Company of the Fire Department of Santiago. “There are no political prisoners in Chile”, Augusto Pinochet states at the beginning as Berzosa, in a counterpoint that is characteristic in his editing, shows, in a way that is both realist and measured, the painful testimonies of the mothers and wives of those who have disappeared or are prisoners under the dictatorship. In wilful ignorance of such a reality is the happy society under the restored order: the fire chief, Napoleonic and military, declaring himself apolitical like his department, or the landowner and ex-diplomat who renounces his land. In short, a theatre Berzosa exhibits in all its farse and artifice.
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Wednesday, 13 September 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Thursday, 28 September 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 2. José María Berzosa. Voyage au bout de la droite (Journey to the End of the Right)
France, 1977, colour, original version in Spanish, DA, 78’
– Presented by Luis E. Parés, the director of Cineteca, in the first session
In this second episode, different figures explain their political commitment, forming a portrait of Chile’s new ruling class. Monseñor Gilmore, chaplain-general of the Army, speaks about the advantages of the Army teaching young people, while Enrique Ortúzar, president of Chile’s Constitutional Commission in the wake of the coup d’état, describes a particular kind of authority-based democracy. Following these conversations, Berzosa employs a counter-shot: the situation of artists who have remained in Santiago and are under extreme surveillance, a farmer talking about the misery in rural Chile and a powerful extract of Pablo Neruda reciting his words.
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Friday, 15 September 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Friday, 29 September 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 3. José María Berzosa. Au bonheur des généraux (To the Generals’ Happiness)
France, 1977, colour, original version in Spanish, DA, 67’
Can a lack of ethics be reconciled with aesthetics? This appears to be the theme of this third episode, in which Berzosa films a grotesque and humorous portrait of three army officers who, along with commander-in-chief Augusto Pinochet, make up the Military Junta. Gustavo Leigh Guzmán, Air Force commander, Navy commander José Toribio Merino, and César Mendoza Durán, chief of Police, are interviewed in their homes alongside their wives, discussing issues of a literary, musical and philosophical nature. The efforts of all three to portray themselves as sensitive dilettantes, mentioning figures such as Picasso and Bach and even showing their artistic creations, reflect how the beginnings of major dictatorships — one such example being a young painter called Adolf Hitler — can be rooted in considerable artistic frustration.
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Saturday, 16 September 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Saturday, 30 September 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Session 4. José María Berzosa. Monsieur le président (Mr President)
France, 1977, colour, original version in Spanish, DA, 75’
This final episode shows the dictator in all his heroic guises: the peerless army officer, the intrepid explorer, the model citizen, the international geopolitics strategist, the concerned father, the faithful husband. The masks progressively peel away as Berzosa intersperses interviews with the mothers of those who have disappeared under the regime. In a typically Berzosa-esque sequence, we see Pinochet, dressed as a civilian, and his wife, Lucía Hiriart, sat in their home. After discussing film, music and family, the film-maker asks Hiriart: “Does your husband have any faults?”. “No, none”, she replies. “We all have our faults…”. She gives it some thought: “Okay, he can be a little domineering,” she says to the icy smile of the dictator. A simple phrase that dismantles the propaganda around a hero.
![José María Berzosa. Les pompiers de Santiago [Los bomberos de Santiago], película, 1977](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/berzosa_principal.jpg.webp)
Held on 11, 13, 15, 16, 25, 28, 29, 30 sep 2023
José María Berzosa (Spain, 1928 — France, 2018) is a missing link in the history of Spanish cinema, his filmography, made entirely in France, characterised by the use of sarcasm and parody against despotic power. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 coup d’état in Chile, the Museo Reina Sofía screens the full version of his documentary series Chili Impressions (1977), following one sole screening in Spain, which took place in Filmoteca Española in 1981. The documentary’s four episodes unmask the monstrosities of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, while also spotlighting film’s capacity to confront tyranny and represent the subjugated.
Berzosa, who made around a hundred documentaries for French television, came to occupy a unique position in the TV industry as he developed his own themes using a distinctive language and was lauded by the critics as one of the most original film-makers in the medium. Exiled to France from 1956, he was initially a director’s assistant for film-makers such as Jean Renoir and Luis Buñuel, but soon became a reference point in his own right due to his television reports, the aforementioned Chili Impressions among them. Berzosa stood out for conceiving documentary in a baroque style using words from the time and with the co-existence of complex narrative strategies ranging from the staging of direct interviews, the use of counterpoint and antithesis in the editing, the idea of filming malevolence and infamy head-on and, his most idiosyncratic trait, the use of humour as a weapon against a harsh and implacable reality.
Berzosa also centred his gaze on dismantling the myths of Spanishness that spread during Francoism, for instance in Rouge Greco Rouge (Red Greco Red, 1973) and Comment se débarrasser des restes du Cid? (How to Dispose of the Remains of el Cid? 1974), which is perhaps the reason why he went to great lengths to film the Chilean dictatorship, which, in the words of the chaplain of Augusto Pinochet, bore the most similarities to the Franco regime. In the four episodes of Chili Impressions, Berzosa pieces together a portrait of the regime from different angles: Les pompiers de Santiago (The Firefighters of Santiago), which presents a group from an alt-right corporation; Voyage au bout de la droite (Journey to the End of the Right), a route through the formation of the dictatorial State; Au bonheur des généraux (To the Generals’ Happiness), an approach to the Military Junta and its cultural tastes amid genocide; and Monsieur le président (Mr President), a portrait of the different sides of the dictator. The series was shot in January, February and March of 1977 and was first broadcast in France from April to May 1978 following a futile attempt at censorship by the Chilean Embassy. Today it constitutes one of the most powerful and astute examples of cinema against the brutality of dictatorship.
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
In collaboration with
![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
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8 October 2025 – 24 June 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
Submitting Proposals
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 28 September 2025. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es, submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual). Preference will be given to the in-person format.
- CV and contact details.
- Only one proposal per person will be accepted.
- Proposals related to talks given in the last three conferences will not be accepted.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, French or English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conference days and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
The programme of sessions will be published in the coming days.
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.