Eleccions al Parlament de Catalunya, 1980
FocusVideo-Nou, Col·lectiu EquinocciQ&A with M.Lluïsa Roca and Carles Ameller, members of Video-Nou, moderated by doctor and researcher Daniel Gasol20.10.2417:00 h Zumzeig Cinecooperatiu 5€
Date of the elections: 20 March 1980 (the first regional elections). Sound of the radio: we hear the 6am news. In this piece, Video-Nou together with the collective Equinocci, make us a part of the elections’ event with a multiple and diverse vantage points directed at it. A taxi driver says he will “vote for the left”, Santiago Carrillo (historic leader of the Communist Party) is giving a speech at a PSUC/PCE party meeting. Felipe González (leader of the Socialist Party and Spanish Prime Minister 1982-1996) is speaking at a PSC/PSOE party meeting. An electoral banner featuring Jordi Pujol (leader of the CIU party and president of Catalunya 1980-2003) appears several times in the video. Whilst we are presented with images of Barcelona in those days, the incessant sound of the radio fills the air. We watch people from back then and political parties that today, either don’t exist or if they do, they are certainly not the same. We are also introduced to the misery of the fishermen. And we get to know the pad that the collective Video-Nou had at the time within the School of Theatre. Perhaps, one of the most attractive scenes in this film is the one in which Jordi Pujol is interviewed over Baroque music.
Biography
Video-Nou was founded as a collective at the beginning of 1977. The idea for its creation came out of the Jornadas de Vídeo, organised by the CAIC (Buenos Aires) at the Fundación Joan Miró in Barcelona. The collective’s members, mostly ex-students of the CIPLA course of Barcelona’s Theatre Institute, had different backgrounds: journalism, sociology, pedagogy, photography, architecture, art and design - later, new members joined with backgrounds in urbanism, antipsychiatry and theatre arts. The collective explored the different fields of application of video: the social, the artistic, the documentary, the educational and the professional. Video-Nou’s activity gradually focused on the practice of a horizontal, bidirectional and participative kind of communication, within what was then known as “sociocultural animation”: in this case, the production of videos elaborated with the direct participation of the interested subjects, videos that were then immediately distributed and broadcast in their specific contexts - what the collective called “video intervention”.
Early in 1979 Video-Nou became the managing team of Servei de Vídeo Comunitari - created as a public service -, and in March 1979 organised the first Community Video Days at the Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya. In July 1979 the collective started its collaboration with the Theatre Institute, first as a non-for-profit organisation and later as a cooperative. This lasted until 1983. The main objective of the Servei de Vídeo Comunitari was to distribute and promote the use of video as a means of communication and social, cultural, educational and informative dynamisation of community life. Over three hundred people were trained, and information and distribution contacts were kept with the international net of centres dedicated to decentralised and horizontal forms of communication. The project also contributed in a critical manner to the expansion of video and local television.
Details
Duration: 45'
Director: Video-Nou, Col·lectiu Equinocci
Year: 1980
Country: Spain
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Version: OV
Director: Video-Nou, Col·lectiu Equinocci
Year: 1980
Country: Spain
Language: Catalan, Spanish
Version: OV
Metodology
This video, made by Video-Nou in 1980, is another example of the collective’s attempt to handle social practices as a fundamental element out of which to formulate any cultural or communicative action. In other words, this video is one of the best examples of that which Video-Nou and other similar groups defined as contextual communication.