Spanish director Carlos Saura died on Friday February 10 at the age of 91, announced theSpanish Film Academy. She praised ” one of the fundamental filmmakers in the history of Spanish cinema”. “His last film, Las paredes hablan (“The walls speak”)was released on Friday, proof of his tireless activity and his love for his profession until his last moments”she said again.
The filmmaker was to receive an honorary Goya on Saturday at the Spanish Cinema Awards ceremony, to be held in Seville. A tribute will be paid to “the memory of an irreplaceable creator”the academy continued.
Carlos Saura, born on January 4, 1932 in a milieu of artists, had made a world reputation under the Franco dictatorship, with films like minted peppermint (1967) or cria cuervos (1975). He was, with his friend Luis Buñuel, the symbol of a Spanish cinema in resistance.
Prolific – he has made around fifty films – Carlos Saura was a filmmaker of the game and the imagination, with a sophisticated aesthetic, a style that was both lyrical and documentary, centered on the fate of the poorest. He often depicted characters from the bourgeoisie, tormented by their past, floating between reality and fantasy.
From the death of Franco, in 1975, and the democratic transition that followed, this madman for music and dance gradually moved on to something else: to love hymns to tango and fado, to Argentinian folklore , to the jota, dance of his native Aragon, to the opera and, above all, to his dear flamenco, becoming, somewhat in spite of himself, an ambassador of Spanish culture.