En Construcción

José Luis Guerín

IndieLisboa 2008 •

Spain, France, Documentary, 2001, 125′

Over three years, José Luis Guerín recorded with obsessive rigor the demolition of an entire section of the Barrio Chino, a crumbling working-class neighborhood in Barcelona, and the construction of a modern residential complex for the new Catalan middle-class. But as the construction of the city of the future proceeds, the past reasserts itself over and over again: as much in the eerie discovery of an ancient Roman cemetery below the foundations of the new building as in the rich cultural lore revealed in a casual conversation between two old neighbors.