Weigh. The prominent Madrid filmmaker died at the age of 91, hours before receiving the Goya de Honor for his career.
Carlos Saurafigure of Spanish and European cinema who signed films such as Breeding ravens and Ay Carmela, He died yesterday at the age of 91 at his home in the mountains of Madrid.announced the Spanish Film Academy.
Since last October 6, the filmmaker was recovering from a fall and his children, the producer Antonio and Ana Saurathey would go to the headquarters of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain to thank the Goya Award of Honor that was going to be given to him today in a symbolic way.
But the statuette had already been delivered to Saura in previous days at his home, the Academy later specified, adding that the Goya festival “will commemorate the memory of an unrepeatable creator.”
Born on January 4, 1932 in Huesca, Aragón, into a family of artists, Saura showed “tireless activity” and “love for the trade until the last moment”, since his last film, the walls speakhad been released last Friday in Spain, said the Academy.
Before dedicating himself to cinema, he discovered in photography its value as testimony and as a memory archive. And with the camera around his neck, he was engaged in “visual jogging”.
It was his way of “being visually active”, as he pointed out in an interview with EFE at the Venice Festival. It was 2015 and cinema had imposed itself on photography for many years, but he never abandoned his camera.
“My photographic vocation was early due to a loving imperative”, affirmed the artist in the prologue of the book Carlos Saura. Spain Years 50.
“Indispensable work”
The reactions of sorrow for the death of this director frequently cited among the greats of Spanish cinema, together with Luis Bunuel and Pedro AlmodovarThey did not wait.
“With Carlos Saura, a very important part of the history of Spanish cinema dies. He leaves behind him an essential work for deep reflection on human behavior. Rest in peace, friend,” Spanish actor Antonio Banderas tweeted.
The president of the Government, the socialist Pedro Sanchezdescribed him on Twitter as a “fundamental figure of Spanish culture”, whose “talent is and will always be a cultural heritage of our history thanks to unforgettable films like Ay, Carmela or La prima Angélica”.
One of his daughters, Anna, posted a photo with her father on Instagram and wrote: “Rest in peace, thank you for so much.”
From the lyrical to the documentary
Director of Cría cuervos in 1975, an allegory of the dictatorship that suffocated his country until that year when he received the jury prize in Cannes, Saura moved towards social realism in the first decades of his career to later privilege musical feature films above all .
Saura, who signed a total of fifty films, obtained his first great international recognition in 1966, when he won the Silver Bear for best director in Berlin for La caza.
With a sophisticated aesthetic and a style that ranged from the lyrical to the documentary, Saura focused on the ills of society and its losers, but after the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975) ended, he turned his camera to his other passion. , music and dance.
Thus, in the 80s he produced his flamenco trilogy: Blood Wedding (1981), Carmen (1983)with an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, and Witchy Love (1986)together with the dancer Antonio Gades.
He also shot love odes to tango or fado, to Argentine folklore or to the jota, but above all to his beloved flamenco, becoming, somewhat to his regret, an ambassador of Spanish culture.
In any case, Saura said in an interview with AFP in 2016 that recognition in his country came “with old age” and that, if it were for the support he received in his country, “he would only have made one movie.”
Married several times and father of several children, he had a relationship with geraldine chaplinhis muse with whom he had a son.
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