Román Gubern

Querido Fotogramas

The 70th anniversary of the “Fotogramas” magazine comes in the shape of a sentimental voyage through the history of Spanish cinema thanks to a mosaic of voices represented by people who make films, those who write them and those who consume them. The documentary pays tribute to the readers of “Fotogramas” helped by the leading figures of Spanish cinema, who will read to the camera the most representative letters received at its offices in the history of the magazine.

Navajeros, censores y nuevos realizadores

Spain. 1978. Year of the first democratic elections following the dictatorship, and of the birth cine quinqui (delinquent movies): films that rapidly became a big commercial success, showing things that were banned by the censorship not too long before.

El precio de la risa

The life of Paco Martínez Soria (1902-1982), one of the most famous and beloved Spanish actors, both on stage and screen; a comedian, a theatrical producer, an idol for the masses. A celebration of the uncommon gift of making people laugh.

Sex, Maracas & Chihuahuas

A joyful tale filled with music. The rise of radio. The jazz big bands. The legendary clubs and ballrooms. The soundtracks of the great musical films and TV shows. Sex and romance, gangsters, luxury cars and palm trees. From Barcelona to New York, with a stop in Cuba. The birth of Las Vegas. The sound of the maracas. Chihuahuas everywhere. The incredible life story of Xavier Cugat (1900-90).

Spanish Western

A vindication of the role of the technicians and artists who made spaghetti western genre possible, and a walk through the landscapes that made it possible to recreate in Spain, mainly in the desert of Almería, hundreds of adventures set in the remote American Far West.

Inverosímil Jardiel Poncela

The Spanish author Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1901-1952) was one of the best comedy writers of all time, a novelist and newspaper columnist, misunderstood, even censored, both by the Second Republic government and Francoism, an outsider ahead of his time; also a filmmaker and screenwriter in Hollywood, architect of a revolutionary theatrical building and scenographer, cartoonist and illustrator. An implausible genius.

El hombre que quiso ser Segundo

The extraordinary life of cinema pioneer Segundo de Chomón.

Queridísimos intelectuales (del placer y del dolor)

Ten Spanish intellectuals (Santiago Carrillo, Fernando Savater, Elena Ochoa, Roman Gubern, Carlos Moya, Luis Gonzalez Seara, Javier Tomeo, Xavier Rubert de Ventós, Antonio Soler, Nuria Amat) philosophize about life, eroticism, humor, irony , suffering, suicide and death.

Fragmentos para una historia del otro cine español

Documentary about the history of experimental cinema in Spain. FRAGMENTS is a historical survey of “the other” Spanish Cinema — films that brazenly explored their artistic, poetic and conceptual potential. Spanish experimental cinema can be glimpsed in a series of important yet isolated events that FRAGMENTS compiles through various firsthand accounts, film excerpts and documents. For the first time in Spain, a documentary brings together the most relevant of a cinema that is slowly losing its invisibility.

El cine libertario: cuando las películas hacen historia

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, the anarchist union CNT socialized the film industry in Spain, so in Madrid and Barcelona film workers took over the production assets and, between 1936 and 1938, numerous films on a wide variety of topics were released, composing a varied mosaic that gives rise to one of the most unusual and original moments of Spanish cinematography.

Celuloide colectivo: el cine en guerra

July, 1936. The terrible Spanish Civil War begins. When the streets are taken by the working class, the social revolution begins as well. The public shows are socialized, a model of production and exhibition of films, never seen before in the history of cinema, is created, where the workers are the owners and managers of the industry, through the unions.

A War in Hollywood

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused a great impression on the lives of most of the American artists of that era, so many movies were made in Hollywood about it. The final defeat of the Spanish Republic left an open wound in the hearts of those who sympathized with its cause. The eventful life of screenwriter Alvah Bessie (1904-1985), one of the Hollywood Ten, serves to analyze this sadness, the tragedy of Spain and its consequences.

Speaking of Buñuel

Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre.

The Long Winter

In 1939, Ramón 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.

Umbracle

This film turns on two basic axes: the inquiry into ways of cinematographic representation and a critical image of official Spain at the time of the Franco dictatorship. “Montage of attractions” and Brechtianism in strong doses. Umbracle is made up of fragments (some are archive footage) that resound rather than progress by unusual links, with dejá vu scenes that promise us more but remain tensely unfinished. Jonathan Rosembaun said: “few directors since Resnais have played so ruthlessly with the unconscious narrative expectations to bug us”. Learning from the feeling of strangeness caused by Rossellini as he threw well known actors into savage scenery in southern Europe. Portabella makes Christopher Lee wander around a dream-like Barcelona. Without a doubt Portabella’s most structurally complex and most profoundly political film, that is ferociously poetic.

Liberxina 90

A drug has been discovered, Liberxina 90, which will erase "establishment" conditioning from the human mind. It has fallen into the hands of some diversely anarchistic revolutionaries who spend most of the film discussing how and whether to use it; should they wait for the forces of "history" to undermine society or speed things up using the drug? They are finally forced into action by the police who are, somewhat ineptly, hunting them down.

A Winter in Mallorca

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.

BiBici Story

While waiting to get started on the production of his feature Liberxina 90 (1970), Carlos Duran shot this short (with very expressive support by several Escuela de Barcelona professors): a grimly colourful satire on modern society as such, and on its fascist Spanish variety in particular. "The intrusion into the private life of a human being, of the distinct tendencies that exist in the society we live in, until they fall into chaos." Carlos Durán