Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
She appeared when Spain was waking up from a long post-war period and crying with melodramas starring children, a child prodigy unlike any other; a girl who, in time, would become a symbol of freedom and a total artist. Actress, singer, friend, lover. This is the story of Ana Belén.
How Don Quixote de la Mancha, the immortal character created by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605, has been depicted in cinema, television, cartoons, theater, opera, ballet and other artistic disciplines. An adventure that began more than four hundred years ago in the pages of a book and is far from coming to an end…
A walk through the work of Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010) that is neither a documentary nor a narrative movie, but a tribute to one of the greatest directors of Spanish cinema. Anything can happen: the performers are not themselves, but their characters; there are no interviews, but greetings; a series of entrances and exits. A joyful reunion, a celebration of life.
Spain. The Basque Country. Sometime in the 90s. Josu Jon, a young member of a terrorist organization, has suffered an almost complete memory loss after being wounded in a shooting with the Spanish police. As he awaits for his trial, his condition is being treated at the prison hospital. Other inmates belonging to the same organization try to make him remember how brave a "gudari" -a Basque soldier- he is and how he must go back to the armed fight for the independence of their country as soon as he gets out of prison. Meanwhile, Xabier, a college professor who has been death-threatened by the terrorists due to his political views on the Basque situation, is having an affair with Francesca, a young psychologist who happens to end up trying to help Josu Jon recover his memory. A warm feeling of mutual affection grows between her and her patient. At a point, it doesn't seem to be clear whether Josu Jon really wants to recover his memory or rather forget forever who he actually is.
Simon transports illegal immigrants to New York, leaving them to their fate. He is discovered by the coastguard and Andrés, a young sailor, saves his life. When he falls for a young protegée of Simon conflict erupts.
A fight over the calf of a prize milk cow in the close-knit and traditional Pas Valley of Cantabria leaves a cantankerous dairy farmer dead and another fearful of arrest. He and his daughter Val conspire to keep the cause of death quiet, but tensions mount when Val becomes attracted to the dead farmer's son, Rai, estranged from his father and now a hairdresser in the city. The tensions open long-festering family resentments and spur the lurid imagination of Val's younger sister, the teen Genia. "What goes unsaid, gets undone," the Pasiegos say, but is it true? Is there harm in staying silent?
After an old soldier named Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) wrote the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the knight and his squire have become very popular. When he learns that the Turkish comes along the Mediterranean coast with a powerful army, Don Quixote will undertake, again opposed by his niece and his housekeeper, a new adventure that begins in La Mancha and ends on the coast.
When three estranged sisters, Gloria, Ana and Lidia, meet up again on the death of their mother, Adela, they find themselves obeying her somewhat eccentric last wishes. Though their mother has spent the last 30 years without uttering a single word, she has left very clear written instructions of what she wants done after her death.
Three sisters leave Cuba in search of a better life in Madrid. While there, they encounter, among other things, other Cuban expatriates.
Ana works in an office where the things are going very badly. One night after having dinner with nasty rich people, she has a discussion with her husband. He dissapears and then the life of Ana changes: she has incredible luck in gambling.
An air-hostess is pregnant but she does not know the name of the father, a foreigner. When the baby is born, she gives it to her sister that has already two children. The child grows up as another member of the family. Although the adults keep the secret, the children know that he is different.
Miniseries version of the first half of Cervantes' famous novel.
An emotional trip through the most relevant aspects of Seville's Holy Week, released for the 1992 Universal Exhibition held in Seville. Music played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Fifteen years after the plot a lawyer and a military ex-attorney meet and recall the intense days of 1975 when both participated in the decission of war or peace. The film is told in flashbacks of the two protagonists.
An intrigue based on a failed relationship with touches of dreams and magic filmed on the streets of Seville.
Pedro Jarrapellejos (Antonio Ferrandis) is a ladies man who cannot turn the heads of Isabel (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) or her beautiful daughter. When both peasant women are found raped and murdered in a brutal scene, a schoolteacher is falsely accused. Pedro knows his own nephew and his friend participated in the killings, but he uses his considerable influence over the police and courts to intimidate the witnesses into silence.
After the Civil War, Rosa, daughter of a humble Asturian family house with a sharpener, a drifter who later dies in jail accused of a crime he did not commit. By staying widow emigrated to Madrid with her daughter Olvido. SHe has just opened an exclusive restaurant that becomes a meeting place for politicians, intellectuals, businessmen ...
Set in a crumbling Spanish mansion, this gloriously comic and gothic story follows the fortunes of an innocent young priest as he enters a world of moral decadence, sexual intrigue and corruption of an aristocratic family in nineteenth-century Galicia.
This fantasy about a young man who becomes a bear, who becomes a young man again is equally ambivalent in its identity -- it is a drama that becomes a comedy that becomes a satire, and is not quite a straightforward fable. After the young man runs away from being shackled to a cabin, he spends the winter in a cave and emerges as a bear (obviously a man wearing a bear suit). He is taken in by a writer who teaches him how to use a computer, which somehow poses no problem. The bear speaks like the young man and for awhile tries working as a computer operator, undoubtedly raising questions about the standards in that field. While invited to tea one afternoon, the bear kills a dog in self-defense and is forced to head back to his cave for the winter -- where he emerges after a long hibernation as the young man. In retrospect, contact with the computing world had quite a transforming effect.
Federico, an executive of national television, begins to suspect that his wife Elena, an actress who retired prematurely after marriage, is cheating him with another man. The symptoms are that Elena sighs, looks far into heaven and is aware of the exact time a comet passes. In other words, she expects her most beautiful night.
Juan is the handsome, irresponsible, best-loved second son. When his older brother, who runs the family's black-market business with their steel-willed mother, marries Juan's lover Ana, Juan heads for Madrid to work for Franco. Juan also leaves behind his impoverished cousin, Ángela, pregnant with his son. Jump ten years. Juanito, the lad, has rheumatic fever. The doctor says to pamper the boy. Ángela, Ana, and his grandmother comply. As Juanito recovers, his father returns in desperate need of cash; Juanito witnesses a theft blamed on his innocent mother. Things come to a head at a saint's-name party for father and son. Jealousies, betrayals, and a bullet converge.
A young Catholic girl takes viewers through a changing Spanish political and social landscape as she develops from her confirmation day to adulthood. Her first experience with the real Spain comes when her Jewish godfathers cannot come to her confirmation. One of the godfathers, using a ring, poses an early challenge to her innocence that puts her in danger. He later returns, indirectly introducing her to a new boyfriend. If he is one of the symbols for Jewish life under Franco, or for a Judeo-Christian interaction, that interaction is complex. The young woman encounters different lovers as she grows into adulthood, but at the same time she is burdened with financially supporting her father and his own rather decadent lifestyle. Again, this difference in generations could be understood as a difference between the "new" and "old" Spain; it is up to the viewers to interpret the story elements as they decide.
Told in a manner more common during the Franco era, this movie tells the story of a man who fought with the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and has been hiding in the hills for 10 years. Local people help him avoid constant searches by the police, who know he is there. A returning exile seeks him out to try and get him to surrender, with tragic consequences for both of them.
Ana works side by side with her mother Maria Rosa in the fight to save the anti-Franco militants from the death penalty during the process of Burgos. Ana's mother is a former actress and Ana, her mother and a few other actors prepare an act of protest in the theater where an international festival on Strinberg is being held. But there are more things in Ana's life. The mother lives with her uncle, the brother of his father, Norman, an old doctor of devious methods. Helped by Fatima, an old nurse who loves her father, the doctor will try to experiment with Ana's ideas and feelings as well
Tatin is a young man of fifteen years old who joins a violent group of extreme right-wing ideology, led by Blanca, a mature woman of influential personality.
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.
Furtivos (Poachers) is a 1975 Spanish film directed by José Luis Borau. It stars Lola Gaos, Ovidi Montllor and Alicia Sánchez. The script was written by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón and José Luis Borau. The film is a stark drama that portraits an oedipal relationship and its dire consequences. A great critical and commercial success, it won best picture at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in 1975. Furtivos is considered a classic of Spanish cinema.
Ramiro's grandfather is on vacation in a hostel in the mountains with his family. Decides to send theirs to Madrid and stay in a shelter, saying his health requires. But the reason is another ...
Antoñito is a bachelor who works in a cabaret as a clarinetist. He has put an advertisement in the newspaper, looking for a good and honest girl, and to which responds Rocío, who escapes from her native Córdoba to hide the embarrassment of her pregnancy. The coexistence with the naive clarinetist, who refuses the insinuations of a co-worker dedicated to prostitution, who idolizes his deceased mother and keeps as a relic the orthopedic leg of his late father, is not easy. The other men will tend their ties around Rocío, that makes way in the world of the spectacle pretending to be blind. When she can no longer conceal that she is pregnant, Antoñito decides to give his name to the fruit of sin.
