The "deep beauty" of Enric Miralles's buildings

BarcelonaThe Gas Tower, of'Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, is visible from many points in Barcelona. One of the most iconic views is that of this skyscraper, currently called Torre Marenostrum, framed by the Arc de Triomf. This omnipresence captivated Italian filmmaker Maria Mauti (Milan, 1974), who directed a documentary about the Barcelona architect titled simply Mirallese, which is part of the DocsBarcelona festival program. Tickets for this Tuesday are sold out, but there will be another screening on the 17th at the Renoir Floridablanca cinema, and the documentary is scheduled to hit theaters in September.

"I contacted many people who knew him, and I immediately realized that Miralles was a character for a film," explains Maria Mauti. "I was very affected by the fact that Miralles died very young and because he is buried in one of his masterpieces [the cemetery my new], that his life and his work are forever connected, and that in the documentary we could show a part of his life in each of the works we chose." Among the works are—in addition to the Marenostrum Tower—Miralles and Tagliabue's home, the Santa Caterina Market, and the Scottish Parliament, all three the result of the Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) studio. In addition to the Igualada cemetery, Mauti delves into other projects from Miralles's first phase with Carme Pinós, such as the Morella school-home, the Hostalets de Balenyà civic center, and the Huesca Sports Palace. The latter was highly publicized because its roof collapsed during the final phase of construction.

In the conversations she had with acquaintances of Miralles, who died prematurely in 2000 at the age of 45 from a brain tumor, Mauti encountered a "somewhat mythical" figure. So she tried to go beyond that fixed idea: based on a book by critic James Lord on Giacometti, the director presents the documentary, which she co-wrote with writer Sara Mesa, as a novel in eleven movements and without an ending. All of this is an evocation of Miralles's own architecture, which played with what she found in the places where she built, chance and the unfinished. "There is a political aspect to this politics that is valuing beauty, a profound beauty, because beauty is a value as old as the world, because it can change people, improve them, so it can have a very powerful cultural and political value," says the director.

With previously unreleased home footage

The origin of the documentary, an Oberon Media production, dates back to 2019. Another key element of the film is that Tagliabue provided the director with a string of previously unreleased home movies. Mauti, therefore, planned the sequences with the home movies in mind, aiming to bring Miralles, from the past, directly into the story. It's a similar exercise to the one Miralles himself had proposed during the tour of the Igualada cemetery, when he spoke of being alternately alive and dead, or in his home, a circular dwelling whose entrance and exit are broadcast.

"It's as if Miralles entered his work today, as if he were an apparition, as if he were still there," says Mauti. "I didn't want to make any artistic judgment, nor did I want to make a specialized film. I wanted to go further, and search for something invisible, a beauty that perhaps isn't in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground, but that is in the foreground; everyone," he adds. Before Barcelona, Mirrors It was shown at several festivals, such as the Malaga Film Festival. Filmin and TV3 are also participating in the production, so there will be even more opportunities to see it.