If Danièle Huillet (1936-2006) and Jean-Marie Straub (1933-2022) have demonstrated anything since their earliest works, it is that it is possible to make films that are demanding of themselves and respectful of the viewer, treating them as an equal and showing them what they would never have seen otherwise. In fact, all their work has sought to free cinema from the limitations that keep it locked in the high-security prison forged by the constraints of money and the adherence to the clichés of a complacent aesthetic. They delve into reality to unearth the truth buried beneath the sediment of evidence, aiming to make us feel that what we see is neither natural, nor immutable, nor inevitable.

The result: a cinema that settles in the territory of craftsmanship, of the exquisite care with which the materiality of the work is treated in its films, while being built from absolute modesty - not one of the almost fifty films that make up the extensive complete corpus of the artist we know as "The Straubs" responds to a personal fabulation but always relies on other people's works -, understanding that the texts of the most varied origin that they brought to the screen were the space of a radical challenge and the place to apply a working method capable of making visible the idea that everything individual is, in essence, collective.

That's why it's worth taking Jean-Marie Straub's words seriously when he championed the qualities of his cinema: “We think our cinema is simple cinema. Undoubtedly, to better appreciate our films, one needs to have certain interests: cinema, art, literature. But above all, one needs to have ideas about the world. I don't see anything elitist in all this. Our cinema is the only simple cinema; it's others who make rhetorical films in which you don't know what they're talking about.” (SZ)

The book presentation will take place at 19:30 p.m. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The reinvention of cinema. Those encounters with them by Santos Zunzunegui (author), Natalia Ruiz (Complutense University of Madrid) and Ma-nuel Asín (CBA programmer).