Arrebato (Rapture)

Iván Zulueta was the author of numerous films in different formats, especially in the low-budget formats not connected to industry – Super 8 and 16mm. Many of his films have been exhibited only a few times. Arrebato (Rapture) is perhaps his most ambitious film, as it is a compendium of many of the interests and obsessions that he had addressed in his previous short films. Considered a kind of self-portrait and a generational mirror of the underground Madrid culture, the film develops transversal discourses present in the Museo Reina Sofía collection: experimentation with drugs as a space for freedom within the boundaries of late Francoism and the subsequent transition to democracy; transcending film genres as grand narratives; and the notion of metacinema, or cinema within cinema. Zulueta used experimental techniques that were not very common in the Spanish cinema scene, such as found footage made into a collage along with material filmed by the author –, and the use of extracts from his previous works, such as Souvenir. He also made use of fragments of classic commercial film, cartoons, comics and other elements of popular culture, recycled after a nihilistic and aesthetic treatment, a reflection of the influence that British Pop Art had on his work, in unexpected fusion with the Spanish Baroque tradition.



Lola Hinojosa