The cinema of Ventura Pons: Theatricality as a minoritarian device

In this article, I analyse Ventura Pons' process of adapting plays for the big screen. Willingly, he fails to subscribe to the current artistic and industry parameters regarding adaptations and audience expectations. In this article, I focus on Pons's Caricies (1998), Morir (o no) (T2002) and Barcelona (un mapa) (2007) adapted from plays by Sergi Belbel and Lluisa Cunille respectively - three plays that are similar in how impossible for an optimal screen transfer they appear to be. However, apart from the movies per se, what Pons successfully accomplishes in his dual role has little to do with adaptation techniques and more with a creation of a hybrid construct that, in all of its intermedial confusion, deftly frames a painful commentary of the state of Catalonia.