Thursday, March 6, 2008

CARLOS SAURA: Filmmaker in Focuss at MAMI 08







The Filmmaker in focus will be Carlos Saura at 10th MAMI International Film Festival. His eight films including Carmen will be screened.

Carlos Saura (born 4 January 1932, Atarés, Huesca) is a Spanish film director. His interest on cinema started when he was very young. His mother, who was a pianist, instilled in him the liking for music. When he was a teenager he started to practice photography, and in 1950 he made his first illustrated feature films with a 16 mm camera. Carlos Saura is an excellent photographer, an activity that he shares in a sporadic way with the making of films.
He then moved to Madrid to continue his Industrial Engineering career, but his vocation for photography, cinema and journalism made him leave his studies and matriculate. In 1957 he finished studying and got the director diploma. At the same time, he finished his end-of-career short film Tarde del domingo, La (1957). He continued as a professor until 1963. In that year he was removed from the school for strictly political reasons (Franco's censorship). In 1957-1958, he created his first film Cuenca. In 1959 he filmed Golfos Los (1962) _. In this film he tried to create a sort of Spanish Neo-Realism by tackling the juvenile delinquency in the Madrid's poor quarters from a sociological point of view. In his first stage as director he tried to take a position in favour of outcast people, and he got to make a both lyric and documentary-style cinema. In 1965, his style, both lyrical and documentary, centered on the problems of the poor, received the recognition of the international community at the Berlin Film Festival, where he received the Silver Bear for his film La caza. In 1967, his film Peppermint Frappé also received a prize at Berlin. The movies La prima Angélica (Cousin Angélica) of 1973 and Cría cuervos (Feeding the Ravens) of 1975 received the special prize of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1990, he received the Goya Award for the best director and best script for ¡Ay, Carmela!. He was chosen as director for the official film of the 1992 Olympic Games of Barcelona, "Marathon" (1993).The film Mamá cumple cien años (1979) got an Oscar nomination in 1979 as the best foreign film, and it also won the Special Jury Award at the San Sebastian Festival. In 1990, he won two Goya awards as best adapted screenplay writer and best director.





Carmen is a 1983 film adaptation of the opera of the same name by Georges Bizet. It was directed and choreographed in the flamenco style by Carlos Saura. It is the second part of Saura's flamenco trilogy he made in the 80's, after Bodas de sangre and followed by El amor brujo
The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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