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Acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Bigas Luna has died aged 67. The Catalan director had been battling leukemia.Like his peer Pedro Almodóvar, Luna was a key voice in the new wave of Spanish filmmaking that emerged under the shadow of General Franco's repressive regime. He started out as a student of conceptual art and design, taking an early interest in visual technologies that would play into a lifelong passion for painting and photography. Luna's filmmaking career began with low-budget flick Bilbao in 1978, a typically unrestrained, psychosexual drama, before 1981's Reborn - his only English-language film - pitched Dennis Hopper, a phony televangelist, into a relationship with a real faith healer. Anguish (1987) saw Luna turn out a Lynchian horror set in a movie theatre that would go on to achieve cult status.Arguably, his purple patch stretched across a loose trilogy that began with 1981's Jamón, Jamón. That was followed by Golden Balls and,...

Spanish film director whose 'Iberian passion' trilogy began with Jamon Jamon

For 39 years, under General Francisco Franco's repressive regime, it was almost impossible for Spain to create a vibrant film industry and for talented film-makers to express themselves freely. However, after the death of the Generalissimo in 1975, there was a burst of creativity, with Pedro Almodóvar paving the way for directors such as Bigas Luna, who has died of cancer aged 67.

After some years as a conceptual artist who experimented with new audio-visual media, Luna became known internationally for his "Iberian passion" feature film trilogy: Jamon Jamon (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and the Moon (1994), which explored the darkest depths of eroticism and stereotypical Spanish machismo. The first film introduced Penélope Cruz to audiences and launched Javier Bardem as the embodiment of the Spanish stud. "I owe my career to Bigas Luna," Bardem said in 2001.

In the trilogy, Luna,...