Mercado de futuros querĂa ser sĂłlo una cosa: un retrato cinematogrĂĄfico sobre el mercado de la vivienda. El caso español constituĂa un buen ejemplo. La fiebre inmobiliaria, agudizada durante la Ășltima dĂ©cada, habĂa transformado como nunca las ciudades, sus centros y periferias, habĂa mordido sin piedad el paisaje y habĂa convertido la costa del levante español en la mayor conurbaciĂłn del mundo.
Mercedes Ălvarez and Arturo Redin, âEscribir el espacio, habitar el lenguajeâ1
Mercado de futuros (Futures Market) (2011), the second full-length film directed by Mercedes Ălvarez (Soria, 1966âpresent), is many things. First, it is a stunning artistic product that engages the visual sense in order to explore the theme of the crisis in Spain. In this respect, it is a complement to other post-15M works of visual art: for example, the performance piece Los encargados (2011), staged by Santiago Sierra and Jorge Galindo in Madridâs Gran VĂa, and the 15M graphic novel Lo que (me) estĂĄ pasando: diarios de un joven emperdedor (2015), created by comics artist Miguel Brieva.2 Second, understood as a critical text in its own right â thus irreducible to the medium through which this critique is carried out â the film complements wider interest in thinking through the root causes and persisting consequences of the crisis in Spain. The film synthesizes and comments on economic, political, social and aesthetic discourse, exploring the same issues brought to light in the 15M dossier organized by Bryan Cameron and published in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies (2014), in Jon Snyderâs Poetics of Opposition in Contemporary Spain: Politics and the Work of Urban Culture (2015) and in Luis Moreno-Caballudâs Cultures of Anyone (2015), for example. It also builds on a tradition of cultural studies approaches to Barcelonaâs urban culture (Balibrea 2017; Bou and Subirana 2017; Degen 2008; Epps 2001, 2002; Illas 2012; Mercer 2013; Resina 2008; Vilaseca 2013). And third, it is a visual, critical text that reflects deeply on the urban phenomenon. What arguably makes Mercado de futuros a masterpiece is the emphasis that Ălvarez places on interconnected themes of space, architecture and urban form. The result is a filmic challenge to the urbanistic ideology that continues to drive the production of space in the contemporary city.
The first section of this chapter, âThe Documentary of Creation: Architectural Coordinates and Urban Contextâ, introduces the readers to Ălvarezâs work as a director and sets the coordinates for the analysis to follow. Striving to be concise, rather than precise, it introduces the cinematic genre of the documentary of creation as well as key details of the filmâs aesthetics, content and organization. The second section, âThe Poetic-Analytic Mode as Vehicle for and Critique of Capitalist-Urbanistic Ideologyâ, articulates the value of the filmâs explicit urbanization of capitalist political economy. In line with the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey and Barcelona-based urban theorist Manuel Delgado Ruiz, I assert the fundamental role played by urbanism and urbanistic ideology in capitalismâs reproduction of city space since the nineteenth century. I take as my starting point the idea that the housing bubble is a contemporary â and specifically urban â manifestation of the periodic crises inherent to advanced capitalism (Harvey 2012; Lefebvre 1976, 1991), and instead I devote more time to analyzing key sequences from the film in light of Ălvarezâs visual poetics of representation. This section also references the classifications of documentary modality theorized by Bill Nichols (1991, 2001). Whereas Nichols describes how the poetic mode has often been seen as incompatible with politics, I explore how Ălvarez uses its key tropes precisely as an analytic attack on the ideology of urbanized capitalism. It is here that the director portrays and politicizes urban architecture â within capitalistic, neoliberal contexts â as a surface. The visual allure of architecture in Mercado de futuros is depicted as the façade for a more crass and triumphalist urban modernity.
The Documentary of Creation: Architectural Coordinates and Urban Context
Mercado de futuros has received awards at the Premio Miradas Nuevas del Festival de Hyon, Vissions du RĂ©el, the Premio âNavaja de Buñuelâ PelĂcula RevelaciĂłn, TVE, the Premio Mejor Documental, Festival de Cine de Nantes, Francia, and the MenciĂłn Especial de Jurado, Festival Internacional de Cine de Buenos Aires â all in 2011. Beyond its own merits, the film is also important on account of its directorâs connection with the tradition of the documental de creaciĂłn in Spain. Many point to Joaquim JordĂ âs film Mones com la Becky (1999) as the origin of this form of cinematic expression, also emphasizing a debt owed to his work with the Escuela de Barcelona dating back to the second half of the 1960s (e.g. Riambau 2010: 11).3 What is certain is that at the end of 1998, the Universitat AutĂČnoma de Barcelona inaugurated the MĂĄster en TeorĂa y PrĂĄctica del Documental Creativo (Viveros y CatalĂ 2010: 123), and the MĂĄster en Documental de CreaciĂłn program began at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Notably, âLa UPF, durante muchos años, no solo liderĂł el resurgir del documental en Cataluña, propiciĂł el surgimiento de autores que debutaban en el campo de la no-ficciĂłnâ (For many years, the UPF did not only lead the resurgence of documentary film in Catalonia but promoted the emergence of authors that made their debut in the field of nonfiction film) (De Pozo and Oroz 2010: 67). Ălvarez was among the first students in the program, along with other notable figures such as Isaki Lacuesta and Ariadna Pujol (see De Pozo and Oroz 2010: 68).
Like director Abel GarcĂa Roure (Una cierta verdad [2008], see Fraser 2016), Ălvarez had been a member of the team working with JosĂ© Luis GuerĂn (BallĂł 2010: 108â09). Specifically, she was the montadora/editor on GuerĂnâs film En construcciĂłn (BallĂł 2010: 113). Her first film project as director was El cielo gira (2004). Reduced to its barest content, this film explores the dwindling rural population of the small town Aldealseñor in Soria. Yet Ălvarez uses this basic premise, along with paintings of Pello Azketa, an artist who is losing his sight, to forge a cinematic meditation on temporality, disappearance and human landscape. As Jordi BallĂł notes, this first full-length film is concordant with the broader aims of the documental de creaciĂłn, in that, âCon El cielo gira se ratificaba que la frontera entre documental y ficciĂłn era solo una cuestiĂłn nominal y de dramaturgia, y que en este cine de lo real anidaba una nueva poĂ©tica y un nuevo sentido de la emociĂłnâ (El cielo gira confirmed that the boundary between documentary and fiction film was only a nominal matter of production and that this cine de lo real [real film] had a new poetics and a new sense of emotion) (BallĂł 2010: 115).4 Themes of spatiality, time and memory were already interconnected in El cielo gira, and they were implicated in its critical success. Yet, as noted by critic Javier Serrano, in the directorâs sophomore effort these themes are notably and more directly urbanized.
With her second full-length film, Ălvarez continues to question the border between documentary and fiction and to explore the way emotions are implicated in space/place. By effectively urbanizing El cielo giraâs cinematic insights regarding time, memory and loss, Mercado de futuros contributes to an urban subtradition of the documental de creaciĂłn. Two figures are obligatory references for understanding what she accomplishes with this effort. Ălvarez has been inspired by her mentor VĂctor Ericeâs El sol del membrillo (1991) and is following closely in the footsteps of JosĂ© Luis GuerĂnâs En construcciĂłn (2001).5 These two films played with documentary approaches to urban themes, and both were in dialogue with a poetic mode of urban representation.6 Yet Mercado de futuros pushes both of these dimensions of the directorâs work to an extreme impossible in those earlier films. To explain: running through Ericeâs undoubtedly complex film there is also a more easily digestible biographical focus. The centrality of painter Antonio LĂłpez GarcĂaâs artistic process to El sol del membrillo is a device that quite naturally supports the introduction of philosophical themes and subtly induces a poetic response in the spectator. Likewise, GuerĂnâs challenging film centers on easily recognizable and iconic spaces that have long proven central to Barcelonaâs shifting identity as a global city. It is notable that Mercado de futuros does not rely on either of those advantages. Instead, the director has accepted the challenge of building a philosophical, poetic and urban narrative from scratch.
The film is defined by and constructed through a series of tensions. It is both inaccessible and inviting, conceptual and topical. At the beginning of the film, after a section of animation that is worthy of critical attention in its own right, a voice-over by Ălvarez outlines the contemplative agenda for the film:
There is a coldness to this introductory voice-over, as t...