The documentary on the groundbreaking career of Ouka Leele, photographer of La movida, arrives at the Festival de Málaga
Ouka Leele. ‘El viaje de una estrella’, produced by RTVE, delves into the iconic work of the Madrid artist
On Tuesday the 5th of March, the María Victoria Atencia cultural centre hosted the screening of the documentary Ouka Leele. El viaje de una estrella, produced by RTVE. The film, which is presented out of competition, tells the story of Ouka Leele, known as the photographer of the La movida madrileña. She was a groundbreaking artist who brought colour to the Spain that was emerging from the dictatorship, with her unique way of creating and painting photographs.
The presentation prior to the screening was attended by the directors of the documentary, Bárbara Mateos and Jesús Jiménez, and the director of the RTVE programme Imprescindibles, Marcos Hernández.
The latter wanted to highlight the importance of the figure of Bárbara Allende Gil de Biedma (Ouka Leele’s real name) in Spanish culture since the end of the transition, known by some as post-transition: 'Her photography and imagination built what we understand today as Spanish modernity, which ended up being called La movida madrileña. We wanted to produce this documentary because we believe that the work of this essential photographer had been somewhat obscured in recent years', Hernández said.
The project, which took almost nine months to shoot, was made possible thanks to the access the directors had to the artist’s personal photographic archive, thanks to María Rosenfeldt, Ouka Leele’s daughter. As Mateos commented at the presentation, 'Bárbara was a very groundbreaking artist. Her mixture of painting and photography made her work both iconic and unique'.
Her tough personal life – she managed to overcome cancer when she was only 20 years old and raised her daughter alone – also influenced her work: 'She always said that what she was looking for was freedom. If an artist can’t be free, who is going to be free? She managed to combine art and life in a unique way', Jesús Jiménez concluded.
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