El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles (The Lord Worked Wonders in Me, 2011, 146 Min.) by Albert Serra

Discussion: Albert Serra, Alexander García Düttmann

Artworks, especially those that comprise documentary material, can offer a particularly challenging appeal to our thoughts about reality. While their indexical link to the reality they address grants images and sounds a specific credibility, the position of the artist, her aesthetic, thematic and political choices and self-reflexive stance, may generate a critical assessment of the very constitution of reality. At such a point, art meets philosophy. In order to reflect on the relationship between the factual world and its subjective appropriation, questioning hegemonic claims to objectivity and problematising the inherent contradictions of society are inherently philosophical issues. Problematising reality – Encounters between art, cinema and philosophy is a series of projections and discussions, in a partnership between IFILNOVA (CineLab) / FCSH / UNL, Goethe-Institut and Maumaus / Lumiar Cité and in collaboration with Apordoc / Doc’s Kingdom. These encounters between artists and researchers of international renown focus on the very moments where art, cinema and philosophy enter into a productive dialogue.

The fifth programme brings together Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra and philosopher Alexander García Düttmann and takes place at the Goethe-Institut Auditorium. Serra and Garcia Düttmann will be in discussion on occasion of the screening of the film El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles (The Lord Worked Wonders in Me, 2011), directed by Serra. The film is the outcome of a series of exchanges of filmed letters and was commissioned by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) for the exhibition Totes les cartes. Correspondències fílmiques (The complete letters. Filmed Correspondence, 2011-2012), which comprised the filmic correspondence between six pairs of filmmakers from different parts of the world. El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles translates a possible correspondence between Albert Serra (Banyoles) and Lisandro Alonso (Buenos Aires). First screened at the Locarno Film Festival (2011), the film captures Serra's return to the universe of his second feature, Honor de Cavelleria (Honour of the Knights, 2006), in which his protagonists and regular collaborators travel to La Mancha to meet the real contexts of the life of Don Quixote, constructing a reflective work on cinema and its creative processes from the specific formal perspective of the filmmaker.

Albert Serra (1975) lives and works in Banyoles (Catalonia). He earned degrees in Spanish Philology and Theory of Literature from Barcelona University. His films include: ‘Roi Soleil’ (2018), ‘La mort de Louis XIV’ (The Death of Louis XIV, 2016), ‘Història de la meva mort’ (Story of My Death, 2013), ‘El cant dels ocells’ (Birdsong, 2008) and ‘Honor de cavalleria’ (Honour of the Knights, 2006). Serra’s work has been screened and awarded in numerous events and film festivals such as: Catalonia Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2015; dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; Cannes Film Festival; Mar del Plata Film Festival; Locarno Film Festival; and Viennale.

Alexander García Düttmann (1961) lives and works in Berlin. He is a philosopher with an interest in aesthetics and art, but also in moral and political philosophy. García Düttmann studied Philosophy in Frankfurt with Alfred Schmidt and in Paris with Jacques Derrida. After obtaining his PhD from Frankfurt, he spent two years at Stanford University as a Mellon Fellow. His first academic position was a lectureship in Philosophy at Essex University, UK. Currently he is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of the Arts, Berlin. He has also taught in Melbourne; at Middlesex University, where he was Professor of Philosophy for seven years; at New York University, where he was a visiting professor in the autumn term of 1999; and as Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His publications include ‘Was weiß Kunst?: Für eine Ästhetik des Widerstands’ (What Does Art Know? For An Aesthetics of Resistance, 2015); ‘Naive Kunst: Ein Versuch über das Glück’ (Naive Art: An Essay on Happiness, 2012); ‘Teilnahme: Bewußtsein des Scheins’ (Participation: Awareness of Semblance, 2011); and ‘Derrida und ich. Das Problem der Dekonstruktion’ (Derrida and I: The Problem of Deconstruction, 2008).