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The book Punto de Vista publishes every year will also deal with his career, as yet little known in Spain

Punto de Vista is to devote one of the two retrospectives in this year's edition, held from 27th March to 1st April 2023, to the work of Peter Nestler (b. Germany, 1937), in a programme showcasing the films he made together with his wife Zsóka Nestler (b. Hungary, 1944), as well as with other collaborators. This is one of the most important bodies of work in contemporary European documentary film, but up to now has been little known in Spain. The retrospective, entitled Es nahen andere Zeiten / Se acercan otros tiempos [Other Times are Coming], will also feature the presence in Pamplona of Peter Nestler himself. This is a film event at national level, which will subsequently be travelling to Barcelona (Filmoteca de Catalunya), Madrid (Cineteca), Coruña (CGAI) and Valencia (Filmoteca de Valencia).

Nestler, who has made over 60 films in his career, has had retrospectives at leading international institutions in Paris, London and New York, but this will be his first in Spain. Together with some of his essential titles, it will present recent finds and restorations from archives, as well as some of his recent work. A call for resistance, hope and change has been a constant in Peter and his partner and colleague Zsóka Nestler's work since they started making films in the early seventies. Politics, international struggles, immigrants and minorities' working conditions, the manufacturing process of things and materials, as well as a constant interest in popular art and music have been at the centre of much of his film work. The retrospective will include screenings of films like Am Siel (1962), Zigeuner sein (1970), Spanien! (1973), Die Judengasse (1988), Pachamama - nuestra tierra (1995) and Unrecht und Widerstand (2022), among others.

The Punto de Vista 2023 publication about Peter and Zsóka Nestler

Alongside the retrospective, the festival will be devoting a publication to Peter Nestler's work and that of some of his closest collaborators, so highlighting the collective nature of all his work. Texts, interviews and work documents connected with his work will be brought together for the first time in Spanish. The publication will include the shooting diary of one of Nestler's most recent films, Picasso en Vallauris (2021), written and illustrated by Bassem Pablo Al Bacha Fernandez, texts and interviews with Nestler and some of his collaborators (Zsóka Nestler, Rainer Komers, Reinald and Robert W. Schnell), several of his scripts and lavish graphic materials, all complemented by a documented filmography giving brief notes on his six decades of work. The second part of the publication will be a reproduction of a book with photographs and texts by Nestler and Reinald Schnell published in 1974, Bauern Malen Bilder / Los campesinos pintan cuadros [Peasants Paint Pictures]. In 1964, on his way to Greece, he heard about Kovacica, the village of the peasant painters. There, just as night was falling, they asked a man about a place to stay. They ended up in a guest house with straw mattresses, and there they discovered that this small locality had 17 working painters. They visited the village several times, getting to know the artists and their families and observing their work and their techniques. Nestler took photographs, Schnell took notes and from conversations between food, drink and paintings a book emerged, a book that is now being published for the first time in a language other than German, with colour reproductions of the paintings that, in the original edition, could only be printed in black and white for financial reasons.

The retrospective and the publication are the work of Portuguese programmer Ricardo Matos Cabo, responsible among other things for the Peter Nestler retrospective held in London in 2012 and 2013, and Argentinean programmer, critic and film-maker Lucía Salas, a member of the festival programming committee. The book is supported by the Goethe-Institut Madrid.

• Under the title Es nahen andere Zeiten / Se acercan otros tiempos [Other Times are Coming], given its importance it will be travelling after the festival to Barcelona, Madrid, Coruña and Valencia