Welles in Spain - New Documentary

[Harvey Chartrand]

From the Mobius Home Video Forum
Posting by one Henrik Hemlin of Stockholm:

A new documentary road-movie about Orson Welles's relationship to Spain (where he lived for ten years) opens in Sweden today. It's called BRUNNEN ("the well"), referring to Welles's place of burial in the backyard of legendary matador Antonio Ordonez. For this movie, director Kristian Petri had access to 60 hours of unedited footage by Welles himself, including the unfinished DON QUIXOTE.

Petri met up with Franco in Torremolinos, and apparently the cult director had a lot of interesting stories to tell. I'm just reading about this in a newspaper article that includes a couple of quotes by Franco: "I was one of the people who knew him (Welles) best. I understood him." Franco described Welles as both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

For Stockholm residents, this film plays at Bio Sture on Birger Jarlsgatan. I understand it's also being sold to several international film festivals.

[Knowles Noel Shane]

Where do people find treasure troves like that? I love to see any rediscovered footage by Welles, but we're always at the mercy of the documentary's director - we get a few snippets. One Man Band would have been so much better if it had dumped all the new interviews and simply contained just the original raw footage - regardless of condition. With Quixote, I like what Jess Franco came up with, though I'd much rather see the original footage he worked from. The commercial world hasn't really discovered that avenue yet - that they needn't even do postproduction on some projects - they could just release several DVDs of unedited footage instead.

[Harvey Chartrand]

http://film.nu/?page=filmrecension_visa&filmid=682

Can anyone translate this from Swedish to English?
Story is illustrated with photo of Welles' grave...

[Glenn Anders]

'Fraid not, but that "thumbs down" suggests that the reviewer did not think much of the documentary.

Thanks, Harvey, for rooting this out. I have never seen a picture of Welles grave. Perhaps the film would be useful just for some footage of the grave's environs, remembering how much Welles loved that area of Spain.

Glenn