Chema Prado is one of the most well-known names in the international film scene, he was the director of the Spanish Cinemathèque for almost thirty years. Responsible for recovering, restoring, preserving and promoting Spain’s film heritage, Prado end up meeting and becoming extremely influential with several personalities in that field, such as Chantal Akerman, Isabelle Huppert, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson, Bernardo Bertolucci, Harun Farocki, Werner Herzog, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, John Malkovich, Manoel de Oliveira, Bob Rafelson, Arturo Ripstein, Ridley Scott and many others.
He worked directly with the San Sebastián Film Festival and he was a jury member at the Cannes, Sundance, Valladolid, Locarno, Guadalajara (Mexico), Miami, Rotterdam and Venice film festivals.
From 1992 he started exhibiting his photographs a little all over the world, in galleries and institutions, with particular emphasis on the CHEMA PRADO/SERIES exhibition, that includes the Infraganti and Color series, large-format photographs that we will exhibit this year at the Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival’s 10th edition, in Casino do Estoril, on the 4th of November, before the opening gala.
These series feature spontaneous portraits of some of cinema’s biggest names, such as John Malkovich, Manoel de Oliveira, Robert De Niro, Antonio Banderas, Pedro Almodóvar, Stephen Frears or Jim Jarmusch.
As the title Infraganti implies, Chema Prado explains, these photographs “were not prepared, there wasn’t an agreement with the people portrayed, they didn’t put on make-up, nor there was any lighting preparation. And that spontaneity ends up being a part of the composition itself. For example, in one of them we see Stephen Frears and Manoel de Oliveira, with Frears making a very funny gesture, pretending he is pointing a gun at him”.
Chema Prado's look, in black and white images, at the nooks and crannies of several different cities: Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Prague, New York and Los Angeles.
With Infraganti, exhibited at Casino Estoril, BLANCO Y NEGRO makes up the exhibition CHEMA PRADO / SERIES, presented in the context of the 10th Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival.