TRIBECA REVIEW: ‘Barcelona’

Barcelona is a somewhat odd short film, which is currently playing the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The 7-minute documentary is essentially a photo essay featuring multiple photographs of the architecture of Spain’s famous city. There’s very little movement or actual video footage in the film. Instead, the audience watches photographs connected together like a cultural quilt. Although the images are quite characteristic of the city and its many architectural influences, the totality of the film doesn’t add up to much.

Director Martin Laporte smartly uses colorful tiles to break up the images, and it’s these closeup shots of broken squares that gives Barcelona its originality. We look at the many colorful designs and how they interact with differently designed tiles; it becomes a menagerie of disrupted tessellations. A little more time with each of these photographs would have been appreciated. Just as the viewer takes in the color, design and beauty of an image, it’s shuffled off the screen and another one appears.

The so-called “Ken Burns” effect, when the camera focuses on a particular part of a still photograph, is used too much in the film, but at least it gives the two-dimensional shots a sense of movement and fluidity. What strings everything together is Chantale St-Gelais’ orchestral score, which can feel alternately gloomy and upbeat.

Barcelona will be featured at Tribeca as part of the Journeys Across Cultural Landscapes program.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Barcelona will play April 19 and 27 at 7 p.m. (Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 5); April 28 at 11:30 p.m. (Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 4); and April 29 at 11 a.m. (Tribeca Cinemas Theater 1). Click here for more information.