Noticias

Above: Spanish poster by José María Cruz Novillo for The Garden of Delights.When the great Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura died in February at the age of 90, I searched through his posters to find a suitable piece to post as a tribute and came across several very stylized, diagrammatic designs for his early ’70s films. They turned out to be the work of José María Cruz Novillo, an artist I surprisingly hadn't been aware of previously, but who, I have since found out, is a titan of Spanish graphic design.Above: José María Cruz Novillo (right) with his son Pepe in front of a wall of his film posters. Photo: Fernando Sánchez.Cruz Novillo, who is still working at the age of 86 (in partnership with his architect son Pepe), could rightfully be called the Saul Bass of Spain. Like Bass, he excels in both film marketing and logo design. Since...

Attendees included Carlo Chatrian, Agnieszka Holland, Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff.

The Berlin film festival honoured the legacy of legendary Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, who died aged 91 earlier this month, with a special screening of his last film, documentary Walls Can Talk yesterday (Feb 20).

The attendees included Berlinale’s director Carlo Chatrian, the president of the European Film Academy and Polish director Agnieszka Holland and German directors Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff.

Chatrian said the festival wanted to honour his contribution to cinema and also the special link he had with the Berlinale where he premiered The Hunt (1966), winner of...

His 1975 classic Raise Ravens still points the way for new film-makers wishing to tackle the tricky subject of the Spanish civil war. The old revolutionary reminisces to Giles Tremlett

Carlos Saura once wanted to murder his parents. Not literally, he stresses, but he remembers wishing them dead. "If they were punishing me I would sometimes think, 'Let them die!'," the veteran Spanish film director says. Ana, the child protagonist of his 1976 classic Raise Ravens, is also fond of a bit of parricide. She thinks, indeed, that she has killed her father and – in an attempt to repeat the trick – tries to poison her aunt and persuade her mute grandmother that she too might like some of the deadly powder.

Fortunately for Ana (and her family), the substance she thinks is elephant-strength poison is really bicarbonate of soda. Her powers over life and death exist only in her head – though...

Spanish everyman actor who flourished in the country's post-Franco renaissance

The Spanish actor José Luis López Vázquez, who has died aged 87, was so much a part of Spanish cinema for six decades, appearing in almost 250 films between 1948 and 2007, that it seems inconceivable without him. Short and bald, with a little moustache, bearing a certain resemblance to Groucho Marx, he often embodied the average Spaniard. "I was an insignificant person, and I stayed that way," López explained.

As most of López's career was synchronous with Francisco Franco's 36-year repressive regime, when it was almost impossible for Spain to create a vibrant film industry and for talented film-makers to express themselves freely, the majority of his films were conveyor-belt comedies and melodramas, strictly for home consumption. Nevertheless, in the 1950s and 60s, despite restrictions, a distinctive Spanish art cinema managed to emerge, led primarily by the directors Juan Antonio Bardem, Luis García Berlanga and Carlos Saura,...