30.11.15 Sherry Goes to the Cinema

The Jerez academic and president of the Jerez Cinema Club José Luís Jiménez gave a lecture on the subject of “Sherry goes to the Cinema: Sherry seen in the cinema from Gone with the Wind (1939) to Mr Turner (2014)” as part of the Scientific Symposium celebrating the 80^th anniversary of DO Jerez.

Gone with the wind: "Have a drink of Sherry"

Culture is what defines the human being above the basic necessities, what the mind and wits have created so that our passage through this world is more than a mere exercise in survival. Sherry is part of Western culture. Culture is created by means of art and for those of refined spirit, luxury becomes essential. The poet TS Eliot said, and quite rightly, that “all that a civilised person needs is one, or two, glasses of dry Sherry before dinner.”

"Elementary. A glass of Sherry?"

The influence of life on art and art on life is constant, and as soon as Sherry arrives on the tables of a country it begins to appear in the pages of its literature, its name is soon heard on the stage, and from there it becomes widespread among the people, and the very gesture of offering a glass of Sherry becomes a sacred rite. No art is independent of the people or the society which it sustains, so that when a new art form is born it must necessarily feed itself from the universal fund of culture. In this way the cinema feeds itself from Sherry.

Mr Turner

Sherry is one of the most cinematographic of wines. This conclusion - and many others - can be reached by the study of over 500 films where Sherry plays an active role in the stories brought to the big screen. This lets us understand fundamentally how the image of Sherry has been projected to the world, and yet certain institutions have devalued its potential with odd manipulations in the dubbing of the original soundtrack.