Interval 41. Pedro G. Romero

Intervalos is the Museo Reina Sofía’s regular programme premiering recent film work, made up of critically acclaimed films from the year in progress or the previous one. This edition is devoted to de caballos y guitarras (Of Horses and Guitars, 2024), the latest feature-length film by artist, curator and researcher Pedro G. Romero (Aracena, Huelva, 1964), who will also present the film in both sessions. After the screening in the first session, the artist will take part in a discussion with the audience, while the second showing will be followed by a concert performed by Raül Refree and Alfredo Lagos.

Pedro G. Romero has developed a unique approach to film that is akin to a machine that underscores its multi-voiced and cooperative side, addressing a number of themes such as popular culture, flamenco and the animal gaze. Continuing with these ideas, in de caballos y guitarras the year 1527 reverberates in the background, a year in which the Sack of Rome took place, the looting and destruction by the imperial troops of Charles V, where churches were assaulted by soldiers from the Spanish army. Paradoxically, this desecration threw the ostentation of the Roman temples into disarray through the humility of the first manger surrounded by animals. Setting out from this theme, the film is at once a musical and a reflection on the act of gazing, on one side, as an attempt to escape the anthropocentric gaze and, ultimately, on the same act of gazing in film. As the director states: “it is a horse film, about a guitar concerto for horses performed in the Tempietto del Bramante in Rome, emblematic of ideas of window, perspective and reason determining a hegemonic way of gazing, that which the film seeks to question”.

In de caballos y guitarras the animal gaze is interwoven with a series of musical performances — by guitarists such as Pepe Habichuela, Alfredo Lagos, María Marín and Raül Refree — and conversations around subjects such as research on flamenco ways of life, the gender perspective in film via a dialogue between four women film-makers — María García Ruiz, Virginia García del Pino, María Pérez Sanz and Pilar Monsell — and a vision of historical Rome, in which the voice of Pier Paolo Pasolini reverberates powerfully. 

Credits

Director and screenwriter:

Pedro G. Romero

Production:

v Garde, BNV Producciones, Sarao Films and La Zanfoña

With the special participation of:

María García Ruiz, Virginia García del Pino, María Pérez Sanz and Pilar Monsell

Sound director in Rome:

Stefan Voglsinger

Picture director in Rome:

Isaki Lacuesta

Editing:

Sergi Dies

Sound editing and mixing:

Alberto Carlassare

With the voices of:

Juan Loriente, José Luis Ortiz Nuevo and David Montero

Performances:

María Marín, Raül Refree, Alfredo Lagos, Pepe Habichuela, Dani de Morón, Paco de Amparo, Ciro Biasutto, Bruno Alviani and Riccardo Ascani

Collaboration:

Ministerio de Cultura, Canal Sur Radio y Televisión, Academia de España en Roma, Instituto Cervantes en Roma, Galería Alarcón Criado, ángels Barcelona