“La Quema” [The Burning]: New documentary about Elena del Rivero’s creative journey

As the climax of the second Extramural art project, Elena del Rivero. Transitar «La Quema» [Elena del Rivero: Transiting ‘The Burning’], the Museu Tàpies presents, as part of the programme of the Barcelona Loop Festival, the new documentary La Quema, produced by Impro Films, A Casa Do Pozo and The Paraclete, in collaboration with Mateo Feijóo, curator of the project Elena del Rivero: Transitar «La Quema».

The project La Quema follows Elena del Rivero’s journey and her earliest works, created in the seventies and eighties, from her studio in Madrid to the Galician village of San Pedro Fiz de Vilar. There, the paintings were exhibited in domestic settings—houses, stables, the local church or school—before they were given up to the passing of time… or to the fire. Through the artist’s reflections, the cooperation of the residents and the final ritual of the burning, the film portrays a process of letting go, memory and transformation, in which loss becomes the beginning of a new creative stage.

Like a diptych, this documentary is presented together with O carro e o home [The Cart and the Man], an audiovisual that is part of the legacy left by the ethnographer from Ourense Xaquín Lorenzo, Xocas, to the Museo do Pobo Galego, of which he was the founder and first chairman of the Board of Trustees. The original film—made in 1940, scripted by Xocas and directed by Antonio Román—recounts the life of the cart as a symbol of traditional Galician material culture. A work strongly influenced by Soviet cinema and the work of Robert J. Flaherty whose actors and actresses are the residents of the hamlet of Facós, in the Municipality of Lobeira (Ourense province), the birthplace of Xaquín Lorenzo.

In 1980, starting from a copy that appeared at the Museo Arqueolóxico Provincial de Ourense and is kept at the Museou do Pobo Galego, the ethnographer, together with film-maker Eloy Lozano, made a new cut with a less mock traditional soundtrack, with text and voiceover by Xocas himself. This second version, sponsored by the Museo do Pobo Galego, was recently digitalised in cooperation with AGADIC (Axencia Galega das Industrias Culturais) and Filmoteca de Galicia.

Credits: 

La Quema [The Burning]

Authors: Daniel Fuertes Perea, Gabriel Jesús García Duque, Gregorio Alejandro Blanco Rivas

Production: Impro Films

Year: 2025

Length: 100 min

O carro e o home [The Cart and the Man]

1940/1980, Galicia, 11 min, original language

Production: P.A.C.E.

Director and photographer: Antonio Román

Script: Xaquín Lorenzo and Antonio Román

Editing: Antonio Román and Carlos Serrano de Osma

Narrator: Ignacio Mateo

Sound: Laffon-Selgas

Laboratory: Arroyo

O carro e o home [The Chart and the Man] (1980 cut)

Production: Praia Lenta Films and Museo do Pobo Galego

Restoration: Eloy Lozano

Script and editing: Xaquín Lorenzo and Eloy Lozano

Text and voiceover: Xaquín Lorenzo

Background music: Eloy Lozano