When Gala met Colometa: Silvia Munt’s Documentary on the Dalinian Muse

Abstract

Abstract As Colometa, folk-heroine of Rodoreda’s La plaça del Diamant brought to the screen in 1982 by Francesc Betriu, Silvia Munt became typecast as Catalonia’s downtrodden girl next door. So it is not surprising that, as director, the subject of her 2003 documentary should be the complete antithesis: Dalí’s irrepressible and empowered muse, Gala. In this essay, Munt not only offers a defence of this vamp, sphynx and scarlet-lady—as imagined biographically by the insecure male psyche—but offers an alternative role model for Catalan women and, with appreciable expertise in the documentary mode, offers a re-definition of Catalan national cinema.