Rediscovering Val del Omar at the Reina Sofia

José Val del Omar was a visionary film director of postwar Spain, hardly known, this array brings him back in his entire splendour 

Madrid, 10/08/10

The array dedicated to José Val del Omar (Loja, Granada 1904- Madrid 1982) longs to cover the "unending" of this creator, in allusion to the credits he used at the end of some of his films, but also to the repercussion of his fragmented and incomplete works, manhandled by history- Spanish civil war and dictatorship- and that now has become a cult reference. 

It presents his "attempts", according to another term he frequently employed with resignation when refering to his never ending initiatives around the image and its overflow. A work not so much oriented to a goal than to constant process of exploration, which developed from photography and film to electronic mediums, accomplishing new practices, such as the one he designated with the initials PLAT of Picto Luminica Audio Tactil.

As the curator of the exhibition, Eugeni Bonet, admits "exhibiting Val del Omar, implies the challenge of recollecting his footsteps, his ideas, beyond a work that escapes the usual and entire significance and encircled of the term. therefore, the exhibition covers, beside his film works and most important photographs, scraps of cut or unconcluded works, sound documents, his machines, writings, graphics and collages which reflect his boundless ideas. On the other hand, there will be a presentation of a reproduction of the PLAT laboratory, the habitat in which he worked and lived until his last days-when he began to obtain the recognition that he hardly accomplished in life- with all the original objects he left upon his death. 

José Val del Omar was described as an "extraordinary camera artist" by Luis Cernuda, who knew him because of the compromise of both with the Misiones Pedagogicas in the times of the Republic. Later on, others referred to him as a poet: a poet of cinema, of the technique, of communications in general. "His career never stops referring to a culture of blood, of which his fellow townsman Federico García Lorca had enlightened him of, and which he made posssible through technical innovations and the persecution of a trembling language", in the words of Eugeni Bonet. The profile of José Val del Omar cannot be ascribed to any sort of definite epigraph of activity, although it did have its main root in cinema. He belonged to a generation that believed cinema was art as a right, rather than an opium for the masses.     

On the other hand, if he is linked to the cinematographic medium he is seen as a doomed creator, of exiguous work; at least, regarding the length of film that is preserved nowadays. Val de Omar is an eccentric in Spanish cinema, little inclined to experimentalism, and with the passing of time has come to be regarded as a cult figure whose veneration is growing and constantly renewed. Val del Omar dedicated a great deal of his time to technological exploration, both in aspects regarding cinema and the challenges of the time (sound cinema, in relief, in color, in wide screen),  than in other fields which include electro caustic, radio, television and educative applications in audiovisual mediums. Some of his interventions aspired to practical solutions, especially in the desolate economy in the Spain of Franco, so dependent on the importations of technological material, stocks of film and other resources.     

Others penetrated in the notion of total entertainment with an unusual visionary instinct, more over if one takes into account that many of his ideas where already made public by him between 1928 and 1944. These include the overflow of the screen and the persecution of acoustic and cubism through the diaphonic sound, bounding, and the tactilvision with its techbiques based on an illuminator pulse, blinking. Val del Omar also always kept in touch with the latest mediums and technologies and even hinted as to the possibilities that were being opened by cybernetics, the laser, digital video and the notion of mixed mediums.    

  • José Val Del Omar. Aguaespejo granadino, 1953-1955. Still from the film. 35mm, b/n, sonido 23'. Courtesy of the Filmoteca Española, Filmoteca de Andalucía y Archivo Mª José Val del Omar & Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga. 

  • José Val Del OmarAcariño galaico (De Barro), 1961-1981-82. Still from the film. 35mm, b/n, sonido 23'. Courtesy of the Filmoteca Española, Filmoteca de Andalucía y Archivo Mª José Val del Omar & Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga. 

  • José Val Del Omar. untitled. ca 1977-1982. Collage on cardboard. 31 x 25,7 cm. Archivo Mª José Val del Omar & Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga. 

  • José Val Del Omar in one of his laboratories (possibly the escuela oficial de Cine in Madrid), ca. 1960. Copy of the time. 18 x 23,4 cm. Archivo Mª José Val del Omar & Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga. 

José Val Del Omar. Aguaespejo granadino, 1953-1955. Still from the film. 35mm, b/n, sonido 23'. Courtesy of the Filmoteca Española, Filmoteca de Andalucía y Archivo Mª José Val del Omar & Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga.