At the end of the seventies, Barcelona was a party. The death of the dictator had left too many unknowns to solve. But amid the political upheavals and upheavals of the moment, Barcelona became a permanent cultural festival. Ocaña dominated the Rambla; theater lovers had the Saló Diana, and the most commercial cinema was Orgia with Bellmunt and the films that would come from Ventura Pons and others. Time for libertarian meetings in Park Güell; the Stones a la Monumental, and unclassifiable publications such as Ajoblanco and Star. The street is/was everyone’s and the neighbors joined the sarau…
In the midst of that playful and cultural effervescence, a group of young people in love with experimental cinema – what was then called underground cinema – decided to explore the possibilities of the nascent video in their encounter with art. They were photographers, poets and artists without a label, mostly in their twenties. They recognized each other at the end of the seventies to found the so-called FVI – an acronym for Film VídeoInformació–, whose unique thinking would be embodied in Visual magazine. As a magazine, Visual lasted only two issues, but that near-secret publication, photocopied and hand-stapled, is considered the movement’s manifesto.
“The FVI was not just the magazine,” points out Juan Bufill, curator of the Visual Origin exhibition, which opens its doors today at the Macba, dedicated to the group. All of them were young people of film library afternoons and long conversations after the sessions. A most heterogeneous collective with a hard core that was initially composed of – in addition to Bufill, filmmaker, poet, and current art critic of La Vanguardia – the artist Eugènia Balcells; the video agitator and spiritual father of the group, Eugeni Bonet; the poet, now gone, Carles Hac Mor; the filmmaker Manuel Huerga, and Ignasi Julià, founder of the magazine Ruta 66, an essential character to understand the times of rock’n’roll in the city. Without forgetting Luis Serra, the group’s unofficial photographer. “Because he had the best camera and was always ready”, jokes Serra himself at the presentation of the exhibition, which will be open until the end of May. Over time, others would be added, such as Jordi Beltran, a regular voice on RAC1, a forerunner of an innovative way of understanding radio.
All of them, as individuals, gradually found their place in the Catalan cultural landscape, especially in the eighties and nineties. As founders of the FVI, however, they are a lost generation. Or unknown Until now, at least. Visual Origen shows part of their work as a group and claims them. And it claims, in addition, with the projection of its films and television programs, such as the legendary Arsenal, from TV3, its essential function to understand everything that would come later.
“Then everything was dark”, comments Balcells. “A match was lit and that humble match, which was us, hinted at another less dark reality”. “We had a subversive perspective on art,” adds Beltran. The FVI, as a cohesive group, did not last long. Just a couple of years. But his legacy is extended, even today. “When everything was to be done and everything was still possible”, says Manuel Huerga.
