Pere Portabella to receive an honorary doctorate on 17 March

Pere Portabella will be awarded an honorary doctorate by UAB in a ceremony which will take place at noon on Tuesday 17 March at the conference hall (Sala d'actes) of the Rectorate Building. The ceremony will be transmitted live over the internet. Professor Josep Maria Català, Chair of the University's Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, is the sponsor of UAB's new honorary doctorate.

11/03/2009

With this award, the University wishes to acknowledge both Portabella's film career and his political commitment. He played an important role in politics during the transition period in Catalonia and as producer, film-maker and screenwriter he has always defended the use of the most free and experimental expressions in films.

The ceremony will begin with the opening speech by UAB Rector Ana Ripoll. Following the speech Isabel Pont Castejón, Secretary General, will read out the approval of the nomination by the Governing Council. The sponsor of the honorary doctorate, Dr Josep Maria Català Domènech, will then be speaking on Portabella's works and life experiences. UAB Rector Ana Ripoll will then award a diploma and the UAB medal to Pere Portabella, who will be giving a master lecture. The ceremony will end with a performance by the UAB Choir, directed by Poire Vallvé. They will be interpreting "Jesu, meine Freude" by J. S. Bach, with the collaboration of a dancer from the UAB Aula de Dansa. The choir will then proceed to interpret Gaudeamus igitur.

Avant-Garde Film-Maker and Committed Activist

Pere Portabella was born in the town of Figueres in 1929. Since the 1960s he has worked as producer, film-maker and screenwriter. He was also an outstanding member of the Catalan film movement, Escola de Barcelona (The Barcelona School), to which film-makers Joaquim Jordà or Vicente Aranda also belonged.

He produced the films Los golfos (1960) by Carlos Saura; El cochecito (1960) by Marco Ferreri; and Viridiana by Luis Buñuel (1961), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and censored in Spain by Franco's regime. More recently, Portabella produced a film by José Luís Guerín, Tren de sombras (1997).

His debut as a director came in 1967 with No compteu amb els dits (1967), written by Joan Brossa. He has directed two films in the past twenty years: Pont de Varsòvia (1990) and El silenci abans de Bach (2007), which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Gijón International Film Festival.

As a prominent figure of the clandestine fight against Franco's dictatorship, Portabella was an active member of the Assemblea de Catalunya (Assembly of Catalonia) since its beginnings in 1966 to the proper founding of the assembly in 1971.

He also worked on the drafting of the Spanish Constitution in 1978 and ran for election as an independent candidate of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC) list. In 1977 he was elected member of the Spanish Senate and from 1980 to 1984 he served as member of the Catalan Parliament. Portabella is currently president of Fundación Alternativas.

Retrospectives of his work have been displayed at the MOMA in New York, the Georges Pompidou Museum in Paris and London's Tate Gallery. In 1999 he received the St. George's Cross Award from the Catalan Government.