Miguel Arribas
Salamanca director Chema de la Peña recalls in this feature documentary professionals early filmmakers like Fernando Colomo, Fernando Trueba, Imanol Uribe, Carmen Maura and Antonio Resines, protagonists of the so called 'New Spanish Cinema' in the 80s. His first films were produced between friends, her back to the industry. Rolled with minimal budget and with the sole intention of having fun ... And big surprise were critical and box office successes. And also true generational manifestos.
Plauto, the clown, tells us the story of the Circo de las Alegrias. Doña Alegría, owner of the Circus is determined that her son Palevhi, maintain the classic line of the show, which begs for a complete renovation. During the last years, the Circus has been dragging like a dying man until the threat of bankruptcy and unemployment has led his workers to anguish. One night in September, Palevhi decides to inform the big family of the circus the final closure. Tears of frustration give way to the search for solutions.
Diana, the Countess of Belflor, is an intelligent, impulsive woman in love with her secretary, Teodoro. He is engaged to Marcela, one of the countess's ladies in waiting. When the countess finds out about the engagement, driven by jealousy, she does everything possible to separate the lovers.
Martín (Zoe Berriatúa) is a teenager living in the San Blas district of Madrid. He is upset with his father Arturo (Imanol Arias) because he blames him for his mother's death. With the help of his girlfriend África (Elena Anaya), who will become his stepsister, he tries to get revenge on him.
Carmen, a journalist with two children, is on her third marriage, to Antonio, a record producer. Over the course of a year, we follow her through her discontents: Antonio's lateness, his fatigue when she wants to make love, his insistence on her company when she prefers solitude, his treating her work as less important than his, his casual and cruel dismissal of her opinions, her boss assigning her an incompetent editor, bartenders ignoring her, her passage into middle age. She can be feisty and edgy, which sometimes gets in the way of what would make her happy. And she regularly threatens to leave Antonio. Will she, and on what terms? What will he do?
This adaptation of Geothe's The Sorrows of Young Werther offers a chilly and remote view of love and its passions. The setting is changed to Spain, and Werther (Eusebio Poncela) has taken a job tutoring the son of an estranged husband and wife. The boy's mother is a surgeon and therefore a rather uncommon woman for her society. She and Werther gradually become romantically involved, and his feelings for her begin to run much deeper than is apparent on the surface.
Rafa and Jeromo are a curious couple of friends. Their friendship began in childhood as well as his love for Silvia, which have been in love since childhood. Silvia Jeromo elected, and Rafa decided to disappear. Years later he returns and finds that the couple is experiencing a serious emotional crisis...
King Carlos II of Spain (r. 1665-1700) once sent his brother Luis to lead a military expedition into Albania and conquer that land for the Spaniards. Since Albania was a part of the dowry of Luis' wife, it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. While that expedition and its final battle is the subject of this historical film, the scale involved can hardly do justice to the concept. The protagonists talk incessantly, and by the time they get down to the final grand battle, it turns out to be a skirmish between several dozen men.
In the late '50s, a young student falls in love with actress Kim Novak and fills the walls of his room with her photographs. One day, he meets a girl who looks a lot like her at a party, but is so shy that he needs to get drunk to declare his love.
Two night watchmen take a man sleeping on a park bench to the police station.
Don Luis is the owner of an industry and all his family work in it, allowing he to become a staunch patriarch.
Spain, 1977. The first general elections are about to take place after the long dictatorship and the progressive environment of Madrid is easily palpable. Protagonists, Carmen and Juan were once married and now living separately, both have a child. It's one of the only reasons they maintain cordial to one another. Their separation, the political context and the contradictions of the progressives of the time will not defeat the affinity between the two.
Two middle aged Spanish men bump into each other at a music store: Calvo, who is a TV actor, and Casado. They were school mates and haven't met for a long time. They begin to remember old times, for instance, when they had to sing the post civil war Spanish anthem and they mistook the lyrics. But suddenly Calvo gets mad, breaks some discs, takes Casado to a small room, and acts as if he were the priest at the school. This priest has found that Casado had dirty magazines in his bedroom, and threatens him to tell his family if he doesn't give away the name of the boy who commits vandalism in the school. Terrified, Casado gives Calvo's name. Calvo comes back to the present, says he wasn't guilty, quietly pays the broken discs, and leaves the store.
