Manuel Pérez Estremera, a key figure in Spanish cinema, dies at the age of 78 | Culture | EUROtoday

Manuel Pérez Estremera died yesterday in Madrid at the age of 78 in the identical means he behaved in life: with out fanfare. His figure has been elementary to Spanish cinema with out the common public figuring out him. And but, he at all times rowed in favor of work, in order that cinema, and particularly Spanish cinema, would go so far as doable. His works embrace directing two editions of the San Sebastián competition (1993 and 1994), the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), the Ministry of Culture in 2004, and director of TVE from 2005 to 2007. But Above all, he joined forces, created group dynamics and promoted all types of initiatives. He outlined himself in an interview in 2005 in a curious means: “Not for a lifetime, but for one night I am very entertaining, because I have a million stories to tell.”

Pérez Estremera was born in Madrid, however he spent his childhood in Ourense, a metropolis that he remembered with immense affection. Although he was going to be a biochemist, some dangerous lecturers and his love for cinema led him to begin his profession as a critic in 1964 for publications comparable to our cinema y Film Ideal. In this work he additionally stood out as a participant in the group that promoted Dialogue notebooks, and all through his profession he printed in numerous magazines. Because of that work, she was current at Cannes in 1968, when the competition was interrupted by the revolution began by the college students. The bolt got here simply with the projection of peppermint hit, by (*78*) Saura, in which Saura himself and Geraldine Chaplin managed to cease, hanging from the curtain.

In 1972 he joined TVE, the place he was an assistant director in the collection the rogue (1974-1975), Tales and legends (1975), written in america (1979) y the black masks (1982). At the then solely tv station he directed Fila 7 (1984), a weekly movie program offered by Rosa María Mateo, earlier than transferring to the External Production sub-directorate, coping with the examine of scripts and initiatives for Spanish cinema, co-productions with Latin America, amongst different duties, between 1987 and 1992. Pérez Estremera felt that he didn’t have the materials of a filmmaker, though he did have the potential to unite, as he demonstrated in the two editions in which he led the San Sebastián movie competition (1993 and 1994).

At Canal Plus Spain he was Director of the program Warehouses and director of Own Production Programs till April 2004, managing the buy of Spanish movie broadcasting rights. From that point Sogecable went on to direct the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), the physique that governs cinema from the Ministry of Culture in 2004, and when he had solely been in workplace for seven months he was required to return to TVE, to direct it from 2005 to 2007. At the time of his appointment, he famous: “I believe in a strong public television, and in the face of the challenge I feel what I under the Scottish shower: hot and cold, horror and hope. It would make me angry to disappoint my colleagues, for them to say: ‘Look, he does the same crap’. After leaving the post, he joined the ERE in 2007.

Already in 2009, as president of the jury of the African film festival of Tarifa (he participated in multiple juries, taught courses in various organizations and collaborated with, for example, the Ibermedia program) he pointed out in an interview in Europe Sur an evil of cinema that remains. “It is a problem with all cinema, including Spanish, that half of it is not seen. The market is as it is. The market has been consolidated in which what prevails is what gives the highest yield. That is the problem of considering the arts a market; and they are something else. The problem is the same that can be found with Finnish cinema or with German cinema. Perhaps more serious with African cinema because it is known even less, but most of the cinema that is made in the world, except for North American, a little French and a little Spanish, is not seen and you have to be aware of it”.

In addition to all this journey, in which he achieved, for instance, a nice enchancment in the Cinematography Fund, Pérez Estremera wrote the books Unfinished correspondence with Arturo Ripstein, New German Cinema, New Latin American Cinema y Problems of the New Cinemaand was accountable for the Production Chair of the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba) between 1998 and 2000.