Albert Serra is a Spanish filmmaker whose four feature films have earned him such classifications as “Romanesque” and even “Radical Classicist.” His breakthrough film, Honour of the Knights (2006), played Cannes and won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Viennale, while his latest film, The Story of My Death, took the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2013.
Serra’s films engage with adaptation and history, including Honour of the Knights’ Don Quixote and the Three Wise Men in Birdsong (2008), and The Story of My Death is no exception. Splicing together stories of Casanova and Dracula, the film is as much about their myths as the transition from one century to another. We couldn’t be more excited to talk to Albert at our studio space in OCAD U’s Graduate Gallery, having the tremendous opportunity to go deep discussing The Story of My Death during the 2013 Toronto International FIlm Festival.
Our interview with Albert Serra was conducted in September of 2013 and was one of four feature interviews in the twenty-first monthly issue of The Seventh Art as a “video magazine.” It was released in August 2014 and is part of our TIFF 2013 coverage, along with interviews with Frederick Wiseman, Corneliu Porumboiu, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ben Wheatley, Ben Rivers & Ben Russell, Don McKellar, Lukas Moodysson, Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez, João Pedro Rodrigues, Ramon Zürcher, Götz Spielmann, Elina Psikou, Mark Peranson, Erik Skjoldbjærg, Bruce LaBruce, Aran Hughes & Christina Koutsospyrou, and Frank Pavich.
