Flash, Mind and Spirit

“Flesh, Mind and Spirit” is a selection of 15 films chosen by Academy Award-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Mexico City, 1963) in collaboration with film critic and Los Angeles Museum of Art Film Curator Elvis Mitchell.

The screenings are free, upon booking, and will be held at Fondazione Prada’s Cinema between 13 January and 1 February 2016, every day except Tuesdays. Presented for the first time in 2009 at the Prada Transformer, designed by OMA in Seoul, the festival offers a unique occasion to experience the reactions and emotions that the director felt when he first saw these films.

As Iñárritu explains, “despite this extremely eclectic selection, there is a common factor: these films are all experiences full of emotion. All of them provoked in me appetites that I never knew I had”.
The full-length films are divided into three categories distinguished by a key word: “Flesh” groups Fists in the Pocket (1965), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Seasons of the Year (1975), Killer of Sheep (1977),Padre Padrone (1977), Yol (1982), and The Good, the Bad, the Weird(2008); “Mind” comprises Last Year at Marienbad (1961), I am Cuba(1964), La Ciénaga (2001), and You, the Living (2007); and “Spirit” consists of Ordet (1955), Mother and Son (1997) and Silent Light (2007). As emphasized by Elvis Mitchell, “most of them are about the family in crisis, and the survival of the family is key to the way Iñárritu works, thinks and feels as an artist and a person”.
A special screening for the public of Pál Fejös’s Lonesome (1928), featuring a live score, will be held on 13 January 2016.

Festival co-curator Elvis Mitchell will introduce the scheduled screenings from Wednesday 13 to Monday 18 January.

Marco Bellocchio will attend the screening of Fists in the Pocket on 16 January at 9pm, which will be followed by a Q&A between the director and the public.