Popular Movies
The Spirit of the Beehive(1973)
96%TomatometerIn post-Civil War Spain, a young girl named Ana explores her vivid imagination to escape the harsh reality of her surroundings. She becomes fascinated with the movie 'The Spirit of the Beehive' and its mysterious character, Frankenstein. As the lines between fantasy and reality blur, Ana embarks on a journey of self-discovery and understanding.
During the filming of a movie, a Spanish actor mysteriously disappears. The police believe he had an accident at a cliff but his body is never found. Many years later, the mystery resurfaces in the present day.
El Sur is a coming-of-age drama set in 1950s Spain. It follows the story of a young girl who discovers a family secret while growing up in the aftermath of the war. The film explores themes of memory, childhood, and the impact of the past on the present.
Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet is a collection of short films that explore the concept of time and its impact on human experience. Through various artistic styles and storytelling techniques, the film offers a unique perspective on the passage of time and its significance in our lives. From moments of anticipation to reflections on the past, each short film presents a different aspect of the human relationship with time.
In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.
Los desafíos presents three separate stories that are linked by an American presence in Spain in the 1960s, with Dean Selmier playing the role of the American male in all three.
Dream of Light is a poetic documentary that follows a painter's journey in search of artistic creation. The film showcases the painter's fascination with the quince tree and his connection to nature. It weaves together themes of agriculture, art, and biography, providing a deep insight into the painter's life and work.
Isabel returns to Spain, after several years of absence, to be cured of a neurosis. His daughter Ana, whom he has not seen in all this time, decides to spend the holidays with her, taking advantage of the fact that her boyfriend has gone to study in Germany. During her stay in the sanatorium, Ana meets Mario, an attractive young man somewhat unbalanced, who tries to seduce her. Although at first she does not show any interest, little by little she becomes attracted to him.
Four voices and their visions of Guimarães, cradle city of the Portuguese nation and European Capital of Culture in 2012.
Apuntes is a sort of prologue to ‘The Quince Tree Sun’. With images shot by Erice in the Summer of 1990, as he was preparing such film, observing how the painter Antonio López worked. Erice wrote and selected the texts which illustrate them. Apuntes is split in 6 parts to show López’s 6 projects.
This film project was made in 1996 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the cinema.
A married woman living in France returns to Madrid to bury her father.
Víctor Erice – Abbas Kiarostami: Correspondences(2007)
Relationships and multiple influences between two great directors of modern cinema.
Part of the collective feature film 3.11 Sense of Home
Short film made by Víctor Erice during his time at the Official School of Cinematography
Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice talks about the first movie he probably ever saw, Roy William Neill's The Scarlet Claw (1944), starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. The remembrances of such a formative cinematic experience leads him to recall the dark days after the end of the Spanish Civil War, to confess the many fears stalking children and to reflect on the nature of memory itself.
Life through a glass, life through a lens, life through a camera. Fade to black. General view of the access to a factory with a big wheel.
Filmed in 1963, but not released in Spain until 1967, the film depicts the failed romance between a bourgeois french tourist girl and a spanish working class boy.
In a school in Extremadura in a town called Arroyo de la Luz, the teacher shows children of about ten years the subtitled Kiarostami film "Where is my friend's house?" and makes them reflect on the moral dilemma about friendship and obedience posed by the film
Víctor Erice
Víctor Erice Aras (Spanish: [ˈbiɣtoɾ eˈɾiθe]; born 30 June 1940; Karrantza) is a Spanish film director. He is best known for his two feature fiction films, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), which many regard as one of the greatest Spanish films ever made, and El Sur (1983). Erice was born in Karrantza, Biscay. He studied law, political science, and economics at the University of Madrid. He also attended the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografia in 1963 to study film direction. He wrote film criticism and reviews for the Spanish film journal Nuestro Cine, and made a series of short films before making his first feature film, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), a critical portrait of 1940s rural Spain. Erice was among other filmmakers, such as Luis Buñuel, who lived in “such restricted societies as Franco’s Spain,” to take aim at the authoritarian rule in power. At the time his first film was released in 1973, Francisco Franco was still in power. One of the things The Spirit of the Beehive is known for is its use of symbolism to portray what life was like in Spain under Franco’s rule. Setting the movie in 1940, at the start of Franco’s rule, was a risk for Erice, given that the film “wasn't a propagandist effort in which stalwart Francoists won victories against evil, priest-massacring Republicans.” Ten years later, Erice wrote and directed El Sur (1983), based on a story from Adelaida García Morales, another highly regarded film, although the producer Elías Querejeta only allowed him to film the first two-thirds of the story. His third movie, The Quince Tree Sun (1992) is a documentary about painter Antonio López García. The film won the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. In July 2022, thirty years after his last full-length film, a project for a new Erice film (Cerrar los ojos) supported by Pecado Films, Tándem Films, Nautilus as well as Canal Sur was revealed to be in development. The film premiered in the following year at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and was met with very positive reviews. He was a member of the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May. At the 2014 Locarno Film Festival, Erice was awarded with a Golden Leopard award for lifetime achievement.
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