Books: Alantansi's Legacy
TECHNICAL DETAILS
📅 Year: 2024🕒 Running time: 71 min
🎬 Directed by: José Ángel Guimerá
✍️ Screenplay: José Ángel Guimerá
🎥 Production: JAGui
📖 Genre: Documentary
🎞️ Format: 16:9
🎵 Original music: Chus Fernández
👪 Suitable for all audiences
📄 Download the project in PDF
SYNOPSIS
In the Aragonese town of Híjar, at the end of the 15th century, a Hebrew printing press produced some of the most significant incunabula of the Iberian Peninsula. Today, these books are studied at the world’s leading universities. By following the traces left on their pages and uncovering the fascinating life of their printer, this feature-length documentary brings to light a forgotten story that weaves together heritage, memory, and the printed word.
A Hebrew printing press in 15th-century Híjar
In the heart of the 15th century, in the town of Ixar —now known as Híjar— a Jewish printer named Eliezer ben Avraham Alantansí founded one of the first Hebrew printing presses on the Iberian Peninsula. His legacy, now scattered across libraries around the world, becomes the guiding thread of this feature-length documentary that weaves together history, memory, and the typographic arts.
Alantansi's Legacy: ספרים is a film that blends documentary with dramatic reenactment to reconstruct the story of this pioneer of Hebrew printing and the extraordinary incunabula produced in his workshop between 1485 and 1490. These books —including the Tur Orach Chaim, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary, and the Yoreh De'ah— stand out not only for their religious and legal content, but also for their material beauty and for the stories of their readers, copyists, censors, and collectors.
Two narrative lines
The documentary is structured around two complementary narrative lines:
🔹 A historical fiction strand, which takes us through the life of Alantansí —from his childhood in the Jewish quarter of Huesca to the founding of the press in Híjar and his eventual flight—.
Still: Rubén Martínez as Eliezer Alantansí
🔹 A documentary and essayistic strand, which travels through universities, archives, and libraries in Barcelona, Jerusalem, New York, Tel Aviv, and Parma, guided by international scholars as they trace the journey of these books and reveal their cultural significance.
Still: Lucía Conte in an interview at the National Library of Israel
Through interviews with experts such as Marjorie Lehman, Avriel Bar-Levav, Shimon Iakerson, Javier Castaño, and Asunción Blasco, the film delves into the implications of the birth of Hebrew printing in Sepharad and the intellectual heritage of a persecuted community.
The books speak for themselves: many copies preserve handwritten notes in their margins, ownership marks, and signs of censorship —traces that reveal the life paths of their owners, the hardships of exile, and the struggle to preserve Jewish identity.
Languages and versions
The main language of the documentary is Spanish, though it also includes interviews in English, excerpts in Hebrew, and passages in medieval Aragonese. Many segments were filmed in the very locations where the Híjar incunabula are preserved today, allowing for detailed views of their typography, colophons, and identifying marks —such as the rampant lion, the first known printer’s mark in the history of Hebrew printed books—.
With meticulous audiovisual craftsmanship and a narrative that blends emotion, historical accuracy, and visual beauty, Alantansi's Legacy: ספרים offers a reflection on the fragility and strength of the printed word —on the book as a tool of resistance and a vessel of memory—.
The documentary is available with subtitles in Spanish and English, and also features dubbed versions in both languages to support international distribution.
