Els noms de Crist

Catalonian Albert Serra’s career has been a curious one. He studied literature, but ended up becoming a film director – reluctantly, he once said, as he considers literature a higher form of art. This may explain why his films Honour of the Knights and Birdsong (IFFR 2009) were based on the literary classic Don Quichotte and the biblical story of the Three Wise Men respectively, but rendered in an unconventional manner. Serra pays more attention to cinematic atmosphere than to plot, thereby underlining the problems facing film adaptations of books.
In this sense, this experimental 14-part series sums up his entire oeuvre. The Names of Christ deals with the challenges of the translation process, from literature to film and from film to museum and from museum to television. The majority of the series, shot in Serra’s unfettered, slow style and over three hours in length, has been incorporated into the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art’s collection.