There is a brief filmography about libraries and bookstores. They have proposed a series of films based on these cabinets. The remembered Frederick Wiseman, whose documentaries are x-rays, made one (From the books2017) about the New York library and its public service. And recently Filmin released The librarians (Kim A. Snyder, 2025), a chilling documentary about censorship in North American libraries and the battle of their archivists, harassed and threatened for safeguarding books on Darwinism or freedom of sexual orientation
with Laia Requesens in the photograph, a documentary about her library. Altaió, however, does not define it as a documentary but rather as “a filmic and poetic essay.” And he continues, “it’s not a film about me, it’s about the books.” It is titled dry stone library because, as the final scenes highlight, an orderly library recalls walls of stones that support themselves. You could also remember that cabin that a character from The Money Heist using books as bricks (Carlos María Domínguez, Periférica). The library receives visits from many friends (Albert Serra, Perejaume, Blanca Llum, Miquel Barceló…), some very playful, like Frederic Amat who paints the black spines of another library on the host’s back. Vall and Requesens also made a testamentary documentary, promoted by Altaió, with the art theorist Arnau Puig. They filmed it in their library.
There are other, very different, documentaries about libraries and the passion for reading, such as the series by Jorge Carrión (Caixaforum+). A piece can be found on Filmin. There is more than one warning from Eco himself about excessive data, noise. Now, he says, true education is not giving information but teaching how to select it. He defends his bibliophile preference for books on false theories. Something very related to its definition of a sign: anything that can be used to lie. There are many books in the library that Eco had not read. They are a reminder of what I didn’t know, an incentive for curiosity. Eco is not the only one worried about information overload. in the rehearsal The art of light knowledge (Siruela, 2023), Xavier Nueno goes to Seneca, from whom he cites that the library of Alexandria deserved to be burned because its accumulation of volumes only served as a demonstration of power. Nueno also finds a defense of his theses in the Enlightenment. In the 18th century, The Encyclopedia by Diderot and D’Alambert is presented as a summary of the knowledge that is necessary to have. The rest…you can do without. And D’Alambert, in his entry on “bibliomania”, a sordid greed, writes that there are many books written by “dummies” and in a 12-volume work he does not believe there are more than six pages of interest. Cut them out and throw away the rest, he advises.
Cinema likes libraries as places to find, for example, a love candy. Hogwarts has an enviable library, but less populated than the one located in the Beast’s palace. There are those that house dangerous poisoned books (the name of the rose), but others are a place of wisdom: Hypatia taught among the papyri of Alexandria (Now). for the renovation of his library. To avoid harmful sun…the architect has hidden the books.
in the comic What your library says about you by Grant Snider (Garbuix Books, 2022) there is the shelf of unfinished books to which the reader will not return. In it is, although it may seem insulting to some, Ulisesby Joyce. And the 645,000 words of Atlas Shruggedby Ayn Rand, deity of the most rancid capitalism. Literature has also created many imaginary libraries. Perhaps the one that has most fascinated Barcelona residents is that museum of echoes and shadows, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. But Barcelona has another myth, a false news story about a murderous bookseller dazzled more than one writer. For example, Gustave Flaubert whose narrative was also published, “arranged”, by R. Miquel i Planas. Emilio Pascual has made a count of literary libraries (The magic cabinetSiruela) where, for example, Pepe Carvalho appears, whose curious bibliomania consisted of burning them. “The poetry ones burn better.” Or the Nautilus library (20,000 Leagues Under the SeaJules Verne) with black rosewood shelves. Mario Satz speaks in his imaginary libraries (Acantilado, 2022) from an Irish monastery where if you counted the books in its library… a misfortune would happen. In another story he presents an underwater library where the books are not in the form of books. “A snail can be a book.”
Alberto Manguel and Walter Benjamin are two authors who have written about “unpacking a library.” In his article (Olañeta), Benjamin says that the most glorious way to obtain books is to write them yourself, but he also does not disdain another option: not returning those that have been lent to you. His passion for books also appears in Antoni Ros-Marbà’s opera Benjamin in Portbou. There he talks about the sadness of order and the libraries where books are “shrouded.” Alberto Manguel admits that he never knew why the spines of English and Italian books should generally be read from top to bottom and if they are in German or Spanish: from bottom to top. The editor Roberto Calasso (How to organize a libraryAnagrama) recognizes chaos is inevitable and explains a hobby of his: putting a tissue paper or parchment cover on his books. In this way, it protects and camouflages them, preventing visitors from easily discovering “what the homeowner’s mental landscape is made of.”
