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The dream child of 10 Basque businessmen who hoped to prolong San Sebastián’s summer season into late September, the San Sebastian Film Festival was born on Sept. 21, 1953.

Presented by bullfighter Mario Cabré, who romanced Ava Gardner, and comprising just 19 films, won by “La guerra de Dios,” directed by Rafael Gil., rescued from a potential Republican firing squad by Luis Buñuel not so many years before. Fireworks, bullfights and quayside parties regaled the film week.

From that first edition remain the beauty and gastronomy of San Sebastian, a Belle Epoque resort boasting the spectacular white-sand Concha Bay, steep-backed hills, an old quarter of higgeldy-piggeldy streets and a trio of three-star Michelin restaurants. 70 years later, San Sebastián still stuns.

For its first 20 years, held under dictator Francisco Franco, San Sebastián proved, however, a window onto a freer world for a privileged elite, a window onto a freer world graced by Federico Fellini,...

"Pandora and the Flying Dutchman", director Albert Lewin's 1951 drama based on the legend of the 'Flying Dutchman', starring Ava Gardner, James Mason, Nigel Patrick, Sheila Sim, Harold Warrender, Mario Cabré and Marius Goring, will be released theatrically in a new 4K restoration, February 7, 2020:

"...in 1930, fishermen in the small Spanish port of 'Esperanza' make a grim discovery in their nets, the bodies of a man and a woman.

"The resultant ringing of church bells in the village brings the local police and the resident archaeologist, 'Geoffrey Fielding' (Harold Warrender), to the beach. 

"Fielding returns to his villa, and, breaking the 'fourth wall', retells the story of these two people to the audience.

"Esperanza's small group of English expatriates revolves around 'Pandora Reynolds' (Ava Gardner), an American nightclub singer and femme fatale. 

"All the men love her (or believe that they do), but Pandora is unable to love anyone. She...

"Pandora and the Flying Dutchman", director Albert Lewin's 1951 Brit Technicolor drama based on the legend of the 'Flying Dutchman', starring Ava Gardner, James Mason, Nigel Patrick, Sheila Sim, Harold Warrender, Mario Cabré and Marius Goring, will be released theatrically as a 4K restored release February 7, 2020:

"...in 1930, fishermen in the small Spanish port of 'Esperanza' make a grim discovery in their nets, the bodies of a man and a woman. The resultant ringing of church bells in the village brings the local police and the resident archaeologist, 'Geoffrey Fielding' (Harold Warrender), to the beach. Fielding returns to his villa, and, breaking the 'fourth wall', retells the story of these two people to the audience.

"Esperanza's small group of English expatriates revolves around 'Pandora Reynolds' (Ava Gardner), an American nightclub singer and femme fatale. All the men love her (or believe that they do), but Pandora is unable to love anyone.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Pere Portabella's Nocturno 29 (1968) is showing May 9 - June 8, 2018 in the many countries around the world as part of the series The Directors' Fortnight.Pere Portabella’s Nocturno 29 arrives at the beginning of his directorial career, the film being his first feature after the short No compteu amb els dits (1967). Together, these form the start of a filmography marked with the political charge and deliberate abstraction that were hallmarks of Spain’s so-called Barcelona School. There is a tendency among film writing to see films of the Barcelona School in light of ‘authorial intention’—that is, as a deposit of a social relationship brought about by a specific time and place. Yet one can also view the film individually as a collection of unique iconography pertaining to Spanish class consciousness in its own right.The film is, ostensibly, about...