A Toast to St. Martirià - by Albert Serra (Paperback)

About the Book

""Cinema should be this: making perception of time and space more intense." The town of Banyoles, an hour and a half from Barcelona, hosts a festival every year on the third weekend in November named after its patron, Saint Martyrianus (or, in Catalan, Martiriáa). There are horse races, there are local delicacies and dances, and there is always someone elected to be the festival's pregoner--literally, "town cryer." This person is given the signal honor of opening the fair with a celebratory speech, and in 2022, the controversial and acclaimed filmmaker Albert Serra, born in Banyoles, was handed the microphone. He opened his mouth. . . and this book emerged, whole and entirely improvised. Puckish, confrontational, subversive, and always dripping with Serra's impulsive lust for life, A Toast to St Martiriáa is a headlong journey through the director's formative years and early relationships, all played out against the nightlife of his hometown. These are the experiences that have shaped his own peculiar conception of the movies, art, and life, focused not on metropolitan glamor but the slower pace of the countryside, the little moments lost between edits"--

Book Synopsis

"Cinema should be this: making perception of time and space more intense."

The town of Banyoles, an hour and a half from Barcelona, hosts a festival every year named after its patron, Saint Martyrianus (or, in Catalan, Martirià). There are horse races, there are local delicacies and dances, and there is always someone elected to be the festival's pregoner--literally, "town cryer." This person is given the signal honor of opening the fair with a celebratory speech, and in 2022, the controversial and acclaimed filmmaker Albert Serra, born in Banyoles, was handed the microphone. He opened his mouth. . . and this book emerged, whole and entirely improvised.

Puckish, confrontational, subversive, and always dripping with Serra's impulsive lust for life, A Toast to St Martirià is a headlong journey through the director's formative years and early relationships, all played out against the nightlife of his hometown. These are the experiences that have shaped his own peculiar conception of the movies, art, and life, focused not on metropolitan glamor but the slower pace of the countryside, the little moments lost between edits.

Review Quotes

Praise for the films of Albert Serra

Praise for Pacifiction

"There is a thriller lurking around the edges of the movie, or perhaps in its subconscious, as if the conspiracies and acts of violence that are sometimes alluded to in De Roller's conversations were buried in the subtext, just out of view. It suggests John le Carré by way of David Lynch--a feverish and haunting but also wry and meditative rumination on power, secrecy and the color of clouds over water at sunset." --A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"Pacifiction is an intoxicating pleasure." --Jonathan Romney, Financial Times

"With its slow-burning build, it is an unsettling, atmospheric piece that has something of the unknowable quality of the central character, with his glassy diplomat's smile and shark's eyes, inscrutable behind his blue-lensed sunglasses." --Wendy Ide, The Observer

"Pacifiction emerges as one of Serra's more seductive efforts." --Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times

Praise for The Death of Louis XIV

"Serra's sad, stately, haunting addition to the slow-cinema genre doubles up as both an intimate study of the Sun King's death and a requiem for Europe's fading arthouse scene." --Simon Crook, Empire Magazine

"One of the most lugubrious movie premises of recent years is here transformed into startling and fresh entertainment." --Kevin Maher, The Times

"Dying of old age should be the most commonplace thing. This film reveals it to be an extraordinary, eerie spectacle, waiting for all of us." --Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"It presents an allegory of the decline and fall and vanity of power, and an intimate look at the inevitable confrontation with mortality faced by kings and commoners alike." --Peter Keough, The Boston Globe

About the Author

Albert Serra is a Spanish independent filmmaker and manager of the production company Andergraun Films. He is best known for his films Pacifiction (2022), winner of the Louis Delluc Prize; The Death of Louis XIV (2016); and The Story of My Death (2013).

Matthew Tree is a writer and translator in English and Catalan. He has published fourteen works of fiction and nonfiction in both English and Catalan. His work has appeared in Catalonia Today, the Times Literary Supplement, and El Punt Avui. Matthew currently lives between Barcelona and the lakeside town of Banyoles.