Spain

Sonia García López (via DeepL) wrote:
Cristo is the first feature film directed and produced by Margarita Alexandre and Rafael Torrecilla. Evoking the work of Luciano Emmer, this art documentary tells the story of the life of Jesus using only Spanish paintings. In close harmony with the montage, the photographic technique used by Juan Mariné for the filming gives movement to the paintings by Titian, El Greco and Rubens, while the presence of the voices of Fernando Rey, José María Seoane, María Jesús Valdés and other actors of the period give the characters a sense of entity. The film received the category of National Interest from the Censorship Board, undoubtedly more inspired by the film’s exaltation of the national artistic heritage and its religious subject matter than by its artistic aspirations.Read More »

After twenty-five years, Silva rides a horse across the desert to visit his friend Sheriff Jake. They celebrate the meeting, but the next morning Jake tells him that reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their friendship.Read More »

The story of a female journalist and her boyfriend who inadvertently get involved with murder and mayhem and must run for their lives pursued by the Barcelona Mob.Read More »

Ann’s boyfriend leaves her in Prague after suddenly announcing that he doesn’t love her anymore. Lonely, Ann calls a helpline and meets another man, depressed and unhappy. A sensitive and carefully written love story.Read More »

At eleven, everything in Elisa’s life will lose its innocence. One day whilst her father is asleep and her brother is on a swing outside, her father’s friend will rape her, as she cries he tells her if she stops he’ll give her a silver bracelet. It’s from that moment on she will forget what happened to her for a very long time.
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Quote:
In a post-apocalyptic future, the whole world has been reduced to one official building where the establishment lives and a few outskirts counting thousands of unemployed. Among them, a man decides to change the world by selling lemonade in the official building.Read More »

The spirit, hopes, and failures of a troupe of itinerant performers in the 1950s create a poignant, humorous leitmotif in this drama by Fernando Fernan-Gomez. The story of the wandering players is told in flashbacks, as Carlos Galvan (Jose M. Sacristan) reminisces about the good times while under therapy with a psychiatrist in a senior citizens’ home. Carlos and his lover Juanita (Laura del Sol), his teenage son, his father, and a few other actors try to eke out a living by putting on shows in small towns and villages. No one has very much money, but life is lived to the hilt, and Carlos himself has some pretty tall tales.Read More »

Ana is 28. She feels useful and satisfied in her routine work helping others. Nevertheless, outside of her working day, Ana has serious problems relating to people. She is socially awkward and even aggressive towards those people closest to her and whom she loves.

Ana can’t control this behaviour or her emotions, so she suffers constantly and feels tormented and guilty. Really she would just like to feel at ease with herself and with others, to be happy. But her self-destructive, self-harming behaviour only isolates her more and more.

Ana is unaware that she suffers from what psychiatrists call Borderline Personality Disorder.Read More »

Quote:
In an early episode in Carmen, Carlos Saura’s second dance film with renowned flamenco artist Antonio Gades (in what would inevitably prove to be the second film of their collaborative Flamenco trilogy), a group of musicians rehearse at a large, open dance studio within earshot of the choreographer, Antonio (Gades) as he struggles to find the proper tempo suitable to adapting the Seguedilla from Bizet’s opera for a flamenco performance. Reinterpreting the operatic work from a waltzy, 3/4 timed vocal piece to a sprightly, improvisational bulería, the musicians perform their rendition to the receptive Antonio who, along with his studio partner – and perhaps, erstwhile paramour – Cristina (Cristina Hoyos), begin to re-envision Carmen, not as a French composer’s projection of the fiery gypsy seductress – and more broadly, a foreigner’s stereotypical notions of Spanish culture – but rather, as an indigenous adaptation of Prosper Mérimée’s novel, disconnected from the now iconic flourishes of Bizet’s opera. Read More »