Alma flamenca from LaFundició on Vimeo.
Bellvitge, Bellvitge!
is one of the few audiovisual documents that exist about the early years of the Bellvitge neighborhood (L’Hospitalet). Filmed in 1978 (13 years after the start of construction of the apartment blocks that formed the neighborhood), ¡Bellvitge, Bellvitge! has the distinction of being a community documentary video educational project, produced by Julián Álvarez and students from the Institut INB-3.
On Julián Álvarez’s Vimeo channel, you can see a montage (which we embed below) with some fragments of the original footage, which had an approximate duration of 45 minutes. The whereabouts of the original recordings and editing is not clear, although supposedly there is at least one copy in the Arxiu Municipal de L’Hospitalet. It would be necessary to carry out an archaeological work that would ensure the recovery, conservation and dissemination of this document.
¡Bellvitge, Bellvitge! is articulated from the comments of the municipal architect Cosme Grifell and R. Fernández Jurado (one of the first inhabitants of Bellvitge). The documentary includes two performances by the duo Alma Flamenca, formed by the singer
Ginesa Ortega
(who was then 12 years old) and the guitarist
Pedro Sierra
(who was even younger than Ginesa Ortega and who was credited as Manolito, as the video’s authors did not note his real name).
Alma Flamenca
is also the title of the reconstruction of these scenes, which we organized on the occasion of the inauguration of Espai 14-15, in collaboration with the
Federación Coordinadora de Entidades Andaluzas en L’Hospitalet
, with the participation of Carolina Torres on vocals and José Andrés on guitar; a reconstruction that was documented in the video that you can see above these lines.
¡BELLVITGE, BELLVITGE! from Julián Alvarez on Vimeo.
