Claudio Zulian

Work

Claudio Zulian’s career has developed mainly in cinema, video installations and theatre. In 1993, he founded Acteon, a production company based in Barcelona, through which he produces his works. In 1998, the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) hosted his exhibition Scenes from Raval (Escenas del Raval, 1998) where he seeks to give visibility to the environment and people of this Barcelona neighborhood. At the same time, Claudio directed a documentary on the same subject that is also part of the installation.

In 2002, he published the book Horas de la ciudad (2002), a compilation of 24 short stories about the urban fabric and its inhabitants. His interest in showing the relationship between society and the media in a new light is present in his later works such as the photography installation Visions Of Carmel (Visions del Carmel, 2003) or the video installation The Future (L’avenir, 2004) – a documentary version was awarded worldwide - where he reflects on the daily life and hopes of a deindustrialised mining village in Northern France. In The Shifting City (A través del Carmel, 2006), planned both as a documentary and as a video installation, he received the Barcelona City Council Award and the Cinema National Award of Catalonia. Zulian’s interest in those people excluded from audiovisual image in media is again clear in his portrait of a Romanian community in Just Like Paradise (A lo mejor, 2007). The same happens in his return to the Carmel district, working with its teenagers in After Violence (Después de la violencia, 2009) as well as in It Won’t Be The Same (No será lo mismo, 2010). Moreover, this interest is reflected in his evocation of a better future in Enthusiasm (Entusiasmo, 2012), prepared in collaboration with several groups of inhabitants and immigrants of Salt (a neighborhood in Girona, Spain).

In 2011, Zulian’s documentary Fortuny & The Magic Lantern (Fortuny y la lámpara maravillosa, 2010) was selected at the AlJazeera International Documentary Film Festival and nominated for Best Art Documentary at the PriMED. It explores the relationships between East and West through Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo’s designs and sceneries. In 2013, the Jeu de Paume in Paris hosted a retrospective of his works and presents his new creation: Power no power (2013) In 2014, the fiction film Born (2014) was released, which is a drama set in the 18th century. Through the stories of three historical characters, the film explores the beginning of intimate and social interactions that are as true today as they were in the past.

Filmography & video installations