By

Nuria Cancela and Samantha da Silva Diefenthaeler

Published on/by

[in]Transition

Accompanying text

Creators’ Statement
A “Class with Joaquim Jordà” is a video essay that invites us to imagine the Catalan independent filmmaker (1935–2006) as a university professor—his motivations, his way of seeing and of teaching. “What would it be like to be in a class with Jordà as a professor?” Between the real and the imaginary, a critical and speculative video essay is constructed, one that interrogates images in order to build a narrative. Throughout the piece, his voice guides us in a construction that moves between fiction and reality—a game of imagination about his presence. Following Jordà’s path, the images establish unexpected connections, and cinema is understood as a crossroads that never leads in just one direction. A journey of memory reminds us that “it is necessary to oppose with sharpness those forms of knowledge that have explained the world, in order to once again ask: ‘what is of value?’ or ‘valuable for what?’ and ‘for whom?’” (Calderón 2023: 18).

This video essay draws from diverse materials: Jordà’s own films, images he used in his classes, his personal archive—preserved by Numax: Centre d’Estudis Joaquim Jordà—, his statements in lecture series and documentaries, and the oral and personal memory of his former students at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). With the filmmaker’s voice-over as its backbone, this project uses images to articulate ideas, just as Jordà himself did throughout his career as teacher and creator. The three central axes of this piece reflect what has been described as “Jordà’s thought” (Balló and Elduque 2023: 7): the boundaries between documentary and fiction, and between lyrical and essayistic cinema; cinema as a self-reflexive mirror, where illness and death appear forcefully; and filmmaking as a collective act. These elements shaped both his teaching practice and his films, and have been the subject of scholarly analysis.

In his career, filmmaking and teaching constantly fed into each other: not only did he bring reflections on his own work into the classroom, such as the narrative comparison between Un cos al bosc (Joaquim Jordà, 1996) and Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954), but his participation as a professor in the UPF Master’s in Creative Documentary also allowed him to make his film Monos como Becky (2012), thanks to the program’s funding and the involvement of his students in the shooting (Balló 2011). His dual role as creator and teacher was fundamental in shaping his “disciples”: “students who would later establish themselves as film professionals, such as Isaki Lacuesta, Oliver Laxe, Carla Subirana, Marta Andreu, Amanda Villareja or Núria Esquerra” (Rubio López 2023: 79). Beyond his own students, Jordà influenced an entire generation of young Spanish filmmakers in the new millennium (Balló 2011; Cobo-Durán and Liberia Vayá 2021).

To think about Joaquim Jordà’s work is to remember that the image is a tool for addressing the viewer, always showing that behind every documentary record there are people. In his best-known films, such as Numax presenta… (1980) or Monos como Becky, he appears as a filmmaker-conversationalist (Benavente and Salvadó 2009), who approaches his subjects with the camera so that we may understand those who face it and hold the gaze, establishing a direct bond with the audience. While approaching others, he also portrays himself and reflects on his own identity. This video essay seeks to continue his understanding of cinema as a play of mirrors (Benavente and Salvadó, 2009), looking for Jordà’s reflection in his less explored facets, such as his significant teaching work.

*This video essay was part of the exhibition Descobrir Joaquim Jordà, curated by Jordi Balló, Glòria Salvadó, and Albert Elduque in 2022 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

References
Balló, Jordi. 2011. “Los círculos del documental de creación.” Academia: Revista de Cine Español, no. 128, 33–35. http://hdl.handle.net/10230/33318.

Balló, Jordi, and Albert Elduque. 2023. Estímulos: Vida, cine y política. Els petits d’Arcàdia.

Benavente, Fran, and Glòria Salvadó. 2009. “Filmar al otro en el cine de Joaquim Jordà.” Formats: Revista de Comunicació Audiovisual, no. 5. https://raco.cat/index.php/Formats/article/view/256831.

Cobo-Durán, Sergio, and Irene Liberia Vayá. 2021. “Narrativas y estéticas hereditarias en la no ficción española: reminiscencias cinematográficas de la obra de Joaquim Jordà y José Luis Guerin.” Fotocinema: Revista Científica de Cine y Fotografía, 23, 47–74. https://doi.org/10.24310/Fotocinema.2021.v23i.13033.

Rubio López, Cristina. 2023. Más allá del espejo: Dispositivos de disidencia en la obra de Joaquim Jordá: documentales que no son (solo) documentales. Tesis doctoral. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Soto Calderón, Andrea. 2023. Imágenes que resisten: La genealogía como método crítico. La virerreina, Centre de la Imatge: Instituto de Cultura del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona.

Biographies
Nuria Cancela is an associate professor at ESCAC (The Film and Audiovisual School of Catalonia) and holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra since 2024, with a doctoral thesis focused on the performance and star image of the actresses who embodied the archetype of the femme fatale in the Spanish cinema during Francoism. She has published her research in high-impact journals such as L’Atalante, Historia y Comunicación Social, and Hispanic Research Journal, and presented it at international conferences such as NECS and Celebrity Studies. She has also a hybrid and creative profile related to audiovisual creation and dissemination: she published multiple visual essays, was a museum curator, is one of the creators of the podcast “Todas las amigas que conozco” about the audiovisual representation of female friendship, and is a member of the board of directors of “Surcos: Asociación de Estudios Cinematográficos.”

Samantha da Silva Diefenthaeler (Itaituba, Brazil) is a researcher and lecturer with a Ph.D. in Communication from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2024). Her forthcoming book, Kitchen comedy: Comedia, mujeres e insurrecciones domésticas (Aldea Global, 2026), based on her doctoral thesis, examines female comic roles in early cinema from a feminist perspective. Her research spans literary and film theory, semiotics, and gender studies, with publications in prestigious journals and publishers such as International Journal of Film and Media Arts, Cátedra, and McGraw Hill. She has presented her work at international conferences and produced video essays. As a lecturer, she has taught at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, and ESCAC (The Film and Audiovisual School of Catalonia), integrating theoretical frameworks and practical tools in the analysis of media and gender.