Videos

Fray Ángel Serrano, one of the book’s invited chefs, told me that when he read New Art for the first time, he realised his work day cooking, feeding the hens, collecting vegetables, picking fruit, serving three meals a day and washing up – all fitted around mass and other duties – is not so very different to Altamiras’s day back in the eighteenth century. We decided to take that idea as the structure for the booktrailer. Pau Gaya of El Vincle decided to shoot the first scene at dawn although the friars start their day well before that while it is still dark, even in summer. Pau knew and understood the history, he’s a keen cook and he has great experience working in Mediterranean light and locations. Equally important, Fray Ángel enjoyed working with him. For the backdrop we picked San Cristóbal, the only friary Altamiras mentions in his book, and from there we travelled across time via an archive to Fray Ángel’s kitchen. We avoided any staged interviews to camera and instead Pau shot Fray Ángel cooking lunch and talking freely about his work, without any prompts. The final scene captures one of many mornings of work in Vicky’s home, where she cooked the book and wrote much of the narrative woven around the recipes.