Peter Webber

Director of “Girl With A Pearl Earring” and “Inna De Yard”

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

Nice piece about Inna De Yard in The Observer this weekend.

https://t.co/BpeZzYyjcE

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable @ThePCCLondon Indeed ! https://t.co/0s3NpdxVQw

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable @ThePCCLondon 😜🤣

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable @ThePCCLondon Well, we all need someone we can lean on
And if you want it, you can lean on me

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable @ThePCCLondon 🤯😂

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable @ThePCCLondon To cap it off on my right was an enormously fat guy who fell asleep snoring loudly and tried to rest his head on my shoulder as if it was a pillow

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable @ThePCCLondon Reminds me of watching Malicks Tree of Life premiere in Cannes. On my left were two women who spent the entire movie on their bright noisy mobiles texting and whispering together, barely watching the movie. So annoying

[DepressedBergman @DannyDrinksWine]

During Franco's regime in Spain, Luis García Berlanga's "The Executioner" (1963) ran in to censorship trouble in the script stages & also during its release.

The Spanish ambassador for Italy, Sanchez Bella, whom Ricardo Muñoz Suay [Assistant director of the movie] knew from his student days when they had been in opposing political camps, insisted on seeing the film before its official screening. When he saw it he was furious; he ranted that it was unpatriotic and anti-Spanish and he accused Berlanga of having been the unwitting dupe of the Spanish Communist party.

Venice, that year was seething with left-wing and Anarchist groups demonstrating against capital punishment and against Franco. In Italy, Franco was nicknamed “The Executioner” (the film later opened under the title 'La ballata del boia'—'The Executioner’s Ballad'). In Venice, Spanish officials had already been briefed on the case and knew that the Spanish ambassador did not want the film shown. It seemed to the government that the picture was related to the execution of two Spanish Anarchists on August 17, 1963, only a few weeks earlier, although in fact 'The Executioner' had been shot long before that execution. Muñoz Suay had thought of distributing a poster in Venice reproducing Goya’s famous capricho showing a man being garroted, but he was forbidden to do so.

Notwithstanding the official Spanish pressures, 'The Executioner' was screened in Venice. There were some disturbances organized by Anarchist groups, and an effigy was paraded through the streets. The outcome was that the ambassador wrote a long letter to the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affair Fernando Castiella, with a copy to Franco, denouncing Muñoz Suay as "the communist instigator of the film" and Berlanga as having been hoodwinked by the “reds.” The letter also attacked the Minister of Information and Tourism, Fraga Iribarne, and his Director General of Cinematography, Garcia Escudero, accusing them of excessively liberalizing Spanish cinema.

Sanchez Bella wrote, “This film seems to me to be one of the greatest libels ever perpetrated against Spain, an incredible political tract, not against the regime but against all of Spanish society.” Sanchez Bella, it turned out, was after Fraga’s ministerial job, and ultimately he was to succeed in his purpose, initiating the most sinister period in the late Franco era. In a Council of Ministers meeting in Madrid, Franco was to comment, “I well know that Berlanga is not a Communist. He is something far worse: a bad Spaniard.”

After instructions from the censors to cut or alter five of its scenes had been followed, 'The Executioner' was finally released in February 1964. But it was given only a short run in Madrid. Many years later, the exhibitor, Garcia Ramos, commented that official pressures forced him to pull the film out of his theater after only two weeks.

The troubles that 'The Executioner' had run into so discouraged and infuriated Berlanga that he withdrew from direction. His next film was not made until four years later in Argentina.

("Behind the Spanish Lens: Spanish Cinema under Fascism and Democracy", Peter Besas, 1985)

P.S: Remembering the legendary Spanish filmmaker Luis García Berlanga on his 105th birthday!

[Bilge Ebiri @BilgeEbiri]

They actually still talk like this when you catch them off the record.

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@VladDavidzon @simonmontefiore Impressive workload - that’s what happens when you spend more time working and less time grinding, Mr Davidzon.

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@frankcottrell_b @DrJaninaRamirez

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

Girl with a pearl earring down there in the left hand corner

[marah khalad @mar80549]

Twitter is trying to hide my post. If you see it, please leave a dot to help me

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

https://t.co/tuANLowQM0

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

A family is facing an overwhelming challenge as their loved one is detained and needs urgent legal help. https://t.co/nZZxFOyMea

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

Hope For Film https://t.co/8RK8K93JoI

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable Yes

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@BohemiaStable Can you bet on this ?

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@pamelagreyson Do you have a photo of when it was at the Tropicana Motel ?

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@irgarner @yarotrof Or Nihilism perhaps

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@Erickschultz11 @mysteriouskat Maybe both are delusional ? After all these beliefs are cultural constructs and therefore not “real” in any tangible, verifiable sense much like religion which is predicated on belief rather than tangible evidence. Shadows on the cave wall.

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@Erickschultz11 @mysteriouskat The political polarisation is so profound that in some respects the two sides are mirror images of each other rendering debate and compromise near impossible. One wonders how it will end. Not well, I suspect.

[Peter Webber @PeterWebber]

@Erickschultz11 @mysteriouskat Fair enough. As long as there is due process. As a foreign observer it strikes me that people on the other side of the political divide make the same observations about MAGA re rationality and mass psychosis.