El alegre paralelo

The importance "marginal" cinema takes on in portraying the city was ratified by the orderly and well funded television series Cronica d'una mirada, broadcast by Canal 33, in which I was able to recognise BTV's documentary yearning for "the other account" of a time and a place. The series travelled the "grey periods" in Catalonia (the sixties and seventies) in non-professional film formats, or at any rate formats not intended for commercial use. Inevitably, almost all the footage centred on Barcelona, with images and accounts that have now become outstanding documents, like Un Viernes Santo (Tharrats, 1960), El alegre Paralelo (Ripoll-Freixes, 1963) or Carles Barba's acid chronicles in Aspectes i personatges de Barcelona (1964).