Work by Ferrater Mora - Films

Ferrater Mora filmantFerrater Mora became interested in and enthusiastic about an enormous number of things, especially things that interested his contemporaries. Ferrater was, in the best sense of the word, a modern man. He was fascinated by science and technology. He was interested in journalism and literature, but also in photography and cinema. He was intensely and passionately involved in cinematographic activity, especially during the 70s.

We recall some of his words in 1974, when Ferrater had been making films for about seven years:

“Cinema has been for me, since my adolescence, or not much less, an extremely attractive art (…). I was not born, as Rafael Alberti writes in a poem, ‘with the cinema’, but in the surroundings. Two of my first essays revolve around film, and in one of them I deal (rather, I tried) to determine – it was common in those times, and, in this respect, we have greatly improved - the essence of cinema. ‘Life’, as the tangos say, led me along philosophical and professorial paths, which in no way I deplore, but cinema has always kept me interested. Even being a spectator, I never considered it as mere entertainment - just like a final and supreme end, or a panacea. For a long time, many intellectuals have scorned the cinema with the same intensity with which many today idolize it. Without any explicit purpose, I have avoided those extremes” (Film without philosophies, p. 19-20).

On the occasion of the centenary of José Ferrater Mora, and in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya, on October 10, 2012 the film session “Ferrater Mora, the filmmaker philosopher” was organized.