The cast of The Black Ball adds another award on its path to the Academy Awards. After Carlos González was recognized at the CineHorizontes festival in Marseille, it is now Guitarricadelafuente’s turn to collect his prize. The singer and actor from Benicassim received the Discovery Award at the 29th edition of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. A recognition that solidifies the meteoric trajectory of Los Javis’ film and adds to those earned at Cannes or Toronto.
Guitarricadelafuente collected the prize this weekend in Georgia after a special screening of the film. The Spanish artist, making his film debut in the role of a soldier who joins the national army during the Civil War, delivered an emotional thank-you speech and received a standing ovation from the audience. During the interview, he spoke about his deep connection with Sebastián, his first conversation with Los Javis at Primavera Sound, and his fear at making his feature film debut.
«There were many doubts; it wasn’t easy. I was very scared, but Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi had blind faith in me when the script wasn’t even finished and it was only an idea«. Recalling how the initial phase of his approach to The Black Ball went, he assured that the directors simply told him that the film would be “about Federico García Lorca, the Spanish Civil War and three separate stories about gay men. And I said yes at once.«
In front of a totally devoted audience, Guitarricadelafuente also spoke about the chemistry between his character and that of Miguel Bernardeau, who plays Rafael Rodríguez Rapún. «There is a strong component of desire that must be present at all times», he said about the relationship between the two characters in the film. And he added that they met at Miguel’s audition, where he read Lorca’s last verse that is heard in the movie, something he recalled as «a very special moment».
From Interview to Interview
The intense promotional campaign for The Black Ball is getting Guitarricadelafuente appearances on some of the most important headlines in the film world. After sharing Variety’s cover with Miguel Bernardeau, it has now been The Hollywood Reporter who has interviewed the Spanish actor and singer. «Everything is crazy», he insists from a courtyard in Middleburg, Virginia, while the American magazine describes how “his distinctive curls sway calmly in the breeze as he smiles, caught in a kind of disbelief.”
Guitarricadelafuente continues the promotional campaign for The Black Ball.
In this conversation, Guitarricadelafuente says he wanted to be an actor even before he wanted to be a singer. «Music was a very important part of my life, but I didn’t see it as something professional. When I started, about eight years ago, going on tour and singing in front of an audience, I used to be very shy; my stage name was a way for people not to know who I was,» he acknowledged, before adding that «there is a very strong connection between acting in a movie and being at a concert.»
He also opened up about which scene of The Black Ball had been the hardest for him to shoot. «One of the last: the execution», he said. »It was a very intense scene, because it was the culmination of all that emotion and baggage, with that perfect storm unleashed. We were under that storm for three hours. We were carrying those war-era weapons from the thirties that didn’t work. We had to repeat it many times and had to keep ourselves in that hardness, that hostility and that repression. It was very hard to live through that situation.»
It was the day after shooting that scene when he composed The Snow, a piece that could even earn him an Oscar. «It was no coincidence! When we shot that scene, I returned to the hotel room. It was around one in the morning. It was my way of processing it, of dealing with that weight. I had a piano and I wrote a quick and simple melody that I sent directly to Los Javis.»
The Great Impact of The Black Ball
Regarding the box-office success and the monopoly of the cultural conversation that The Black Ball has reached, Guitarricadelafuente congratulated himself that «this film is making people who had not gone to the cinema for ten years come back.» It’s something cultural. It’s not just a queer story; it’s a story about love and about feeling empathy for all those stories that have not been told.«
And he wanted to highlight especially the impact of seeing the “older generations” go to the cinema to see the film. «One could think they would have more prejudices or that they would have stayed quieter about these topics. So it feels like many worlds are shaking hands and, in a sense, are experiencing a moment of reconciliation. It’s as if the whole world were going to see The Black Ball in Spain, regardless of where they come from.»
