Jaime Camino
Documentary about the evacuation in different countries, during the Spanish civil war, of thousands of Spanish children to remove them from the conflict. Approximately three thousand children were welcomed by the Soviet Union. Some of these children, now elderly people, tell us about their experiences during this trip that originally was to be a temporary evacuation and which many could not return until twenty years later.
In 1939, Ramon (Jacques Penot) was a young man, caught up in his Barcelona family's involvement on the Republic side in the brutal Spanish Civil War. He and his family fled into exile ahead of Franco's troops. Now it is many years later, and he has come back to see how his old homestead fared in the intervening years. The only person he can find who is able to remember those years clearly is his family's old butler Claudio (Vittorio Gassman). This film is a sequel to the 1975 film by director Jaime Camino, Largas Vacaciones del 36.
This film within a film is based on the painting Las Meninas by Diego de Velazquez. A young boy enters the canvas of the famous picture of the Spanish king and his court. In order to return to the real world, he must convince the artist to create his famous painting. The other plot involves a film director who is not sure how his film within a film will be created. He is distracted by his troubled marriage and has difficulty focusing on his project.
The two weeks leading up to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 are dramatized from many different locations in Spain, Morocco and London.
Film homage to the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, in which they dramatize fragments of his poems and the play "La casa de Bernarda Alba". From his texts, the voice of the poet himself weaves the plot. His characters come to life: El Amargo, which runs from a poem taken from "El Cante Jond" to the "Romancero Gitano". The Woman, blurred and present in so many of his poems. The Mother, a living synthesis of his play-writing. The balcony is open from the hidden Granada to exciting New York. From the rider of tireless riding to the mysterious baroque of Holy Week. From the first babble of the poet to his violent death. Spain is behind its lyric. Also in many images and tensions of the film. The argument of this one wants to approach the argument of a poet. His life and his work, united irremediably.
Set near Barcelona at the time of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, this epic drama explores the adventures suffered by an uncommitted vacationing family caught unawares by the conflict. In focusing on the war's effects on the family, this film was able to offer much more devastating commentary than would normally have been permitted in the late Franco era.
Loris is a young man who begins a romance with Francisca, his piano teacher, a forty-year-old who lives dominated by her mother, who was a successful soprano in her youth. Loris goes to live at Francisca's house. They will have as neighbor a sexual obsessive, fan of carnivorous plants and spying on people with binoculars. When they are preparing a trip, Francisca's mother shows up at the house. Her initial indignation soon gives way to a great interest for the young man, which will provoke the terrible jealousy of Francisca.
The cigar-smoking French writer, George Sand (Lucia Bose) and her lover, the composer-pianist Chopin (Christopher Sandford) have rented a former monastery in Mallorca as a winter retreat. They have even shipped a piano to the site, so that Chopin can continue his work. However, what promised to be a warm, sunny vacation turns sour as the locals disapprove of Sand, the servants are surly and mysterious, and the monastery is cold. She has her revenge, however. She wrote the book A Winter in Mallorca about her miserable winter retreat. This film follows that book closely, with concern for historical accuracy, which did not increase the Spanish filmmakers' popularity with their countrymen.
Monica, a wife and mother, is dissatisfied with his routine, conventional life. Her husband, Pablo, decides that the best thing for her and her children is to spend the summer in Cadaqués.
David (Mark Stevens) is a physician who returns to Spain 30 years after his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Now a member of a medical convention, he looks up old friends and finds his former lover, now a married woman with a flamenco-dancing daughter. He and the daughter (Manuela Vargas) have an immediate and mutual attraction to each other. He considers running away with the exotic beauty before asking his wife to join him for an extended vacation after the convention .
Paco and Lisa flee to Barcelona in a stolen car with the intention of building a future in show business. After unsuccessfully looking for work, the two youngsters will be immersed in crime and prostitution.
