When Esteve Riambau He stepped down last year as director of the Filmoteca de Catalunya, explaining that his only "major regret" upon leaving the center was not having been able to save the last remaining photochemical laboratory in Catalonia, Image Films. "After two years of studies and political struggle, I couldn't get the project valued enough," he confessed. That's why it's such important news that the Filmoteca has acquired the hardware from the Iskra photochemical laboratory in Madrid, the last one of its kind in Spain. This was announced on Wednesday by the Filmoteca's director, Pablo la Parra, during the center's annual review. "We have completed the installation and commissioning of a photochemical duplication laboratory that will guarantee the survival of cellulose nitrate films," explained La Parra, who asserts that with this acquisition, the Filmoteca's Conservation and Restoration Center becomes "an international benchmark in the photochemical preservation of film." Nitrate film was the most common stock for films in the early days of cinema and the beginning of the 20th century, but it is a very unstable and extremely fragile material. The new equipment will allow these works, which are the oldest and most valuable part of the Film Archive's collection, to be preserved in optimal condition. "Not only will we be able to guarantee the preservation of the images, but we will also be able to project them in photochemical format," La Parra emphasizes. "That is to say, we are preserving the art of projection and the way in which these images were achieved." Instead of passively and defeatistly witnessing the private sector's neglect, La Parra insists that, "as a public institution, the Film Archive must regain the initiative in matters of technological sovereignty." From Fritz Lang to Mia Hansen-Løve

Regarding programming, for the first half of next year the Filmoteca will host a major Fritz Lang retrospective focused on his silent film period, which will be screened with musical accompaniment. "Lang transformed silent cinema into an unprecedented laboratory for formal and moral experimentation," notes La Parra, who affirms the enduring relevance of the director of Metropolis As a filmmaker who "reflects on the technological and political changes and the contradictions of the time he lived through, a moment of democratic crisis, war fervor, and totalitarian rise." The Lang retrospective will continue in the summer with the sound period of his filmography.

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To the extensive cycle that the Filmoteca of Catalonia dedicates starting this Thursday to the Chilean director Valeria Sarmiento (Valparaiso, Chile, 1948) and her sentimental and creative partner, Raoul Ruiz, who died in 2011, a film could be added in which Sarmiento participated as a7 Ocaña. Intermittent Portrait, Ventura Pons's debut film. "It was a very beautiful film, and Ocaña was a wonderful character," he says with a sweet smile, as if unlocking a distant memory, celebrating the film's relevance in the history of LGBT cinema. "I made it because Ventura was a friend of the Chilean photographer Luis Poirot, who told him about me," he says.

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Pere Noguera (La Bisbal d'Empordà, 1941) is one of the most solid and genuine voices of contemporary Catalan art. Capital exponent of thearte povera and the land art, has built over more than fifty years of experience a body of work faithful to humble materials, such as water, clay, and iron, always deploying a poetic discourse on matter, memory, identity, landscape, and the passage of time. Deeply rooted in his hometown, the capital of the Catalan pottery tradition, Noguera, the exhibition-installation Landscape. Clay Pulse, which can be visited until October 26.

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