News

From the day that Christopher Columbus set sail from Huelva to beach up in the Caribbean, the Spanish city has always had strong ties to Latin America.

With Spain still laboring under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, when a group of young film buffs at Huelva’s Film Club aimed to galvanize the city’s culture, “It was logical that we looked to the richness and plenitude of culture that came from abroad,” recalls José Luis Ruíz Díaz, Huelva’s first director. “It was also logical that we had a large interest in Latin America, adds Vicente Quiroga, its longtime head of press. Relaxing, censorship in Spain also allowed access to a suddenly broader sweep of foreign titles.

Huelva’s first 50 editions have proved a faithful reflection of the evolution of cinema in Latin America, Portugal and Spain. Some milestones:

1975: Ruíz Díaz launches Huelva’s first Ibero-American Film Week with Argentina’s “La Raulito.

La marca del hombre lobo.Jacinto Molina grew up in Francoist Spain, the son of an extremely successful furrier. As a young boy, he was surrounded by death in the aftermath of the civil war, losing friends and family members, and passing corpses in the streets and fields around Madrid. Two of Molina’s uncles, both collectors who ran in artistic circles, introduced him to a bohemian lifestyle and range of interests. He met famous painters (Jose Gutierréz Solana), writers (Camilo José Cela), and matadors (Manolete); he was entranced by comic books, the movies, and the occult. When, at his elite boarding school, he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he knew to respond with the respectable aspiration of “architect.” Instead, he would become Paul Naschy.Naschy is now synonymous with a mid-century surge in Gothic Eurohorror that replicated in continental Europe the success of Hammer Films in the UK.

This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival is in mourning as Spanish director Mario Camus, celebrated for his sober but caring adaptations of distinguished Spanish novels such as “La Colmena” – written by Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela – Ignacio Aldecoa’s “Young Sánchez” and “The Holy Innocents” by Miguel Delibes, died on Saturday in Santander, northern Spain, the city where he was born. Camus was 86.

Among his career achievements, Camus took the Berlin Golden Bear for best film with “La Colmena” (1983), a Cannes Prize Ecumenical Jury prize for “The Holy Innocents” (1984). Such films proved a highpoint in Spain’s ruling socialist left’s dream, pushed when Pilar Miró took over as head of Spain’s Icaa film institute in 1982, of maintaining Spanish cinema’s social edge but priming its production levels and taking it onto a European stage.

Camus also participated in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and at the Moscow Festival...

Spanish producer Piluca Baquero (“Lo que sé de Lola”) is teaming with former Btf Media executive Miguel Bueno to launch Ramen Story & Content Studio, a new – and ambitious – TV-film production venture.

Also on board areMiguel Arnas, José Antonio Bosch and Jesus Gómez, Baquero will serve as an executive producer on titles, Bueno, who worked making commercials for much of his career, is director of content at Ramen.

Ramen is focusing on two projects to begin with but “we are not setting a fixed limit” when it comes to annual output, Baquero said at the San Sebastian Festival on Sunday where the partners unveiled the new company.

First out the gate is the sci-fi drama series “Solar.” Kike Maillo, who burst onto the scene with his feature debut “Eva,” is attached to direct, working from scripts by Alex Mendíbil, co-writer of HBO Max’s Spanish comedy “Sin Novedad.”

A documentary, “The Kicks of the Future,...

Spanish film-maker best known for his satire Bienvenido, Mister Marshall!

During the Franco years, the survival of independent cinema in Spain was thanks to the "Three Bs" — Luis Buñuel, Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García Berlanga. The last of these irreverent, original film-makers, who has died aged 89, Berlanga was pivotal in reviving the Spanish film industry after the end of the civil war, despite his many tussles with Franco's censors.

In 1953 he established himself with ¡Bienvenido, Mister Marshall! (Welcome, Mr Marshall!), a masterful comedy about the hopes of Spanish villagers that the Marshall Plan will make them rich. In 1961 Plácido, a satire about a poor man invited to dinner in a wealthy household on Christmas Eve, was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign-language film. But his caustic brand of comedy probably reached its apogee in 1963's El Verdugo (The Executioner) about a young man desperate to get a job...