Albert Serra
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Albert Serra: “Liberté is a poem about the night’s logic, unproductive and infertile”

The well-known director Albert Serra has met this Sunday the communication media to present the first release in Spain of his film ‘Liberté’, taking part in the Official Section of the 16th Seville Festival edition.

The title is set in the French Revolution, which he moves with once again through a fascinating period for him: “There is an inspiration in Marquis de Sade and the erotic novels of the time for sure, but what I was more interested in was to introduce a more contemporary and unwholesome atmosphere”. He mentions that “this short story starts as something decorative, almost inoffensive, but it becomes dark progressively”

In the film, a libertine group runs away from the government of Louis XVI of France trying to export to Germany their philosophy based on the moral and authority rejection. For the Catalan author, ‘Liberté’ is a poem about the night, which has a different logic to the day one.  It is not only about the night of the XVIII century, but about every night: unproductive, infertile, where the evolution absence dominates, and everything starts over”. Serra has insisted on the idea that in this night phase “there is a lack of memory; you do not accumulate knowledge, it runs out and that is it”

Special Award by the Jury in the Cannes Un Certain Regard Section, ‘Liberté’ has as core idea the sexual drive: “The sex is bound to what we have the closest to the soul, and this is the body, something you can try to manage with naturalness”, has pointed out the director. “The friction comes when trying to harmonize it with other people’s bodies, but of course it enters in the category of other things you cannot falsify. This comes out from inside, it is not imposed from outside, you cannot lock it”

With ‘Liberté, entailing his return to Seville after ‘The death of Louis XVI of France’, Albert Serra carries on his aristocracy’s radical revision in History. This project is based on the installation of ‘Personalien’, ordered by Reina Sofía Museum, although the film “interpellatesin other way for its content, it is sadder and desperate. It empties you in some way, as it is very baroque plastically and you have to make an effort because there is no easy images nor clean ones”.