The cinema of Ventura Pons: Theatricality as a minoritarian device

Abstract: En un artículo reciente Josep-Anton Fernàndez (2012) apuntaba que si tuvieran que señalarse tres de las características más enfatizadas por la recepción crítica de Pons, se podrían mencionar las siguientes: en primer lugar, lo relativo a lo performativo, a la teatralidad, a la sexualidad y a la identidad. En segundo lugar, la importancia de Barcelona y su omnipresencia en el imaginario cinematográfico del cineasta catalán, tema que será abordado en detalle por Maribel Rams en este mismo dossier.1 Y, en tercer lugar, la práctica de adaptar textos literarios de autores catalanes, tendencia especialmente destacada desde mediados de la década de los 90 que concedió a Pons el “reconocimiento crítico fuera de su país” (Smith, 2002: 67). Cabe puntualizar que ninguno de los rasgos mencionados arriba es excluyente del otro sino que incluso llegan a converger y a complementarse en varias de sus películas.2 Por otro lado, si bien es cierto que estas podrían ser algunas de las características que mejor definirían la obra de Pons y que más han sido reseñadas por la crítica, me parece oportuno señalar un cuarto aspecto que se muestra, de modo transversal, en los tres rasgos anteriormente apuntados. Me refiero a la constante presencia de la cultura y la lengua catalana en sus filmes. Es preciso recordar en este contexto que Ventura Pons es uno de los directores con una trayectoria más sólida y continuada no solo del cine catalán sino en lengua catalana. El mismo director ha atribuido el éxito de su cine a la propia creencia en la cultura y lengua catalanas: “La clau del

Abstract: This article offers a predominantly contextual introduction to my translation of a contemporary Welsh play by Sera Moore Williams, Crash (2004), into Hungarian. Williams' three-person drama for young people was written originally in the author's native language, Welsh, and translated into English by the playwright herself. In my translation process of the play from English to Hungarian the intermediary role played by English raises ethical concerns from a postcolonial perspective, while in a pragmatic sense it is almost a necessity to rely on it when communicating Welsh-language cultural production to the broader international public, including to other minor languages. The article will place the drama in its generic context, introducing the play as a Theater in Education piece, as Williams' work has been inspirational in the development of tantermi szinhaz [classroom theater] in Hungary since the early 2000s. As a specific case study within the case study, the additional discussion of the translation of Williams' polysemic title will provide an insight into the role such a significant paratext plays in uprooting a dramatic text from one culture to another.

Abstract: Acknowledgements, Introduction: Locations of culture, 1. The commitment to theory, 2. Interrogating identity: Frantz Fanon and the postcolonial prerogative, 3. The other question: Stereotype, discrimination and the discourse of colonialism, 4. Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse, 5. Sly civility, 6. Signs taken for wonders: Questions of ambivalence and authority under a tree outside Delhi, May 1817, 7. Articulating the archaic: Cultural difference and colonial nonsense, 8. DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation, 9. The postcolonial and the postmodern: The question of agency, 10. By bread alone: Signs of violence in the mid-nineteenth century, 11. How newness enters the world: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation, 12. Conclusion: 'Race', time and the revision of modernity, Notes, Index.

Abstract: Acknowledgements, Introduction: Locations of culture, 1. The commitment to theory, 2. Interrogating identity: Frantz Fanon and the postcolonial prerogative, 3. The other question: Stereotype, discrimination and the discourse of colonialism, 4. Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse, 5. Sly civility, 6. Signs taken for wonders: Questions of ambivalence and authority under a tree outside Delhi, May 1817, 7. Articulating the archaic: Cultural difference and colonial nonsense, 8. DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation, 9. The postcolonial and the postmodern: The question of agency, 10. By bread alone: Signs of violence in the mid-nineteenth century, 11. How newness enters the world: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation, 12. Conclusion: 'Race', time and the revision of modernity, Notes, Index.