José Luis Garci

José Luis Garci

Born	José Luis García Muñoz (1944-01-20) 20 January 1944 Madrid, Spain
Occupation	Filmmaker
Years active	1977–present

José Luis Garci (born as José Luis García Muñoz; 20 January 1944) is a Spanish director, producer, critic, TV presenter, screenwriter and author. He earned worldwide acclaim and his country's first Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for Begin the Beguine (1982). Four of his films, including also Sesión continua (1984), Asignatura aprobada (1987) and El abuelo (1998), have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, more than any other Spanish director. His films are characterized for his classical style and the underlying sentimentality of their plots.

Early life and work

Born in 1944 in a humble family from Asturias. After completing a pre-university course, Garci began working as an administrative assistant in a bank. His love for cinema from an early age led him to pursue filmmaking as a career. At age twenty he began writing reviews for a number of film magazines such as: Signos, Cinestudio, Aun and Resena, winning an award in 1968 from the Circulo de Escritores Cinematograficos for his work as film critic.

At the same time, he wrote his first literary works, science fiction stories like : Bibidibabibidibú, Adam Blake, and La Gioconda está triste. He also published the essay: Ray Bradbury humanista del futuro and an article about science fiction films in the Encyclopedia Buru-La.

In 1969 he became involved in scriptwriting, receiving his first screen credits for Antonio Giménez Rico The Cronicón (The Chronicle) (1970).

Between 1972 and 1977 he scripted five more films: León Klimovsky La casa de las chivas (The House of the goats); Pedro Olea No es bueno que el hombre esté solo (1972), (A Man Shouldn’t be Alone); Eloy de la Iglesia Una gota de sangre para morir amando, (1973) (A drop of blood to die loving); Antonio Drove Mi mujer es muy decente dentro de lo que cabe (1974) o Roberto Bodegas Vida conyugal sana (1973)(Healthy Married Life) and Los nuevos españoles (1974)(New Spaniards). During this same period, Garci also wrote the made for T.V film La Cabina (1972)(The Cabin) directed by Antonio Mercero. He then directed his first short films: !Al Futbol! (!To Football!) Mi Marilyn, (My Marilyn) (both 1975) and Tiempo de gente acobardada (People Cowed Time) (1976).

Feature films

In 1977 José Luis Garci directed his first feature film Asignatura pendiente (Unfinished Business) from a script by Gonzalez Sinde, a love story between an old pair of lovers which runs parallel to the social and political changes lived in Spain after the fall of Francisco Franco’s regime. The film was well received by critics and audiences, becoming the most successful representative of the Spanish film of the generation of the Transition from dictatorship to democracy who saw themselves in a social and political limbo. A simple story of an amorous seduction by the film’s hero is set around a series of topical references to a generation of Spaniards born in the immediate post-civil war period whose frustrations and nostalgia are embodied in the film’s protagonist. Gaci took his narrative cues from the visual patterns followed in the traditional Hollywood narrative.

Garci second film Solos en la madrugada (Alone in the Dark) (1978) became skilled tackling progressive social themes intended for an audience interested neither in elite art cinema nor in the popular style of most Spanish comedies. He used this same pattern in his third film, Las verdes praderas (The Green Meadows) (1979), in which heavy sentimentality, a constant in his films, became more apparent.

The director changed gears with El Crack, in which he used the figure of the hard boiled detective in a story inspired by the novels of Dashiell Hammett, to whom the film is dedicated, and employing elements of the American film noirs of the 1930s and 40s giving it a Spanish flavor. The formula worked so well that two years later Garci made a sequel, El crack II (1983).

Between this two films, Garci made his most emblematic work Volver a empezar, (Begin to Beguine) (1983), a sentimental story of an aging writer who returns to Spain after many years in exiled following the civil war. The film was the first Spanish motion picture to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.^[1]

Sesión continua (Double Feature), (1984, which also received an Academy Awards nomination, and Asignatura aprobada (Course Completed, 1987) gave emphasis to sentimentality. Canción de cuna (Cradle Song, 1994), a film adaptation of the sentimental Gregorio Martinez Sierra play. Garci's subsequently films include La herida luminosa (The Wound of Light, 1997), and El abuelo ( The Grandfather, 1999), which was Spain's submission for the Best Foreign Film category of the Academy Awards, getting the final nomination.

Recently, Garci directed Una historia de entonces (You're the One, 2000), Historia de un beso (Story of a Kiss, 2002)), Tiovivo c. 1950 (2004), Ninette (2005), Luz de domingo (2007), Sangre de mayo (2008) and Holmes & Watson. Madrid Days (2012). In addition to filmmaking, he is a popular television and radio sportscaster in his homeland.

Filmography

Year	English title	Original title	Notes
1977	Subject Pending	Asignatura pendiente	Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film nominee
1978	Alone in the Dark	Solos en la madrugada
1979	The Green Meadows	Las verdes praderas
1982	Begin the Beguine	Volver a empezar	Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film winner, 1982
1982	The Crack	El crack
1983	The Crack II	El crack II
1984	Double Feature	Sesión continua	Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film nominee
1987	Course Completed	Asignatura aprobada
1994	Canción de cuna	Canción de cuna
1997	The Wound of Light	La herida luminosa
1998	The Grandfather	El abuelo	Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film nominee
2000	You're the One	Una historia de entonces	European Film Academy Best European Director nominee
2002	Story of A Kiss	Historia de un beso
2004	Tiovivo c. 1950	Tiovivo c. 1950
2005	Ninette	Ninette
2007	Sunday Light	Luz de domingo
2008	Blood of May	Sangre de Mayo
2012	Holmes & Watson. Madrid Days	Holmes & Watson. Madrid Days

References

Benavent, Francisco María, Cine Español de los Noventa,ediciones Mensajero, 2000, ISBN 84-271-2326-4
D’Lugo, Marvin: Guide to the Cinema of Spain, Greenwood Press, 1997. ISBN 0-313-29474-7
Stone, Rob, Spanish Cinema, Pearson Education, 2002, ISBN 0-582-43715-6
Torres, Augusto, Diccionario del cine Español, Espasa Calpe, 1994, ISBN 84-239-9203-9

References

↑ "The 55th Academy Awards (1983) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2013-10-13.

External links

Complete filmography at IMDB

Academy Award for Foreign Language Film Winners

1947–1955 (Honorary)	1947: Shoe-Shine – Vittorio De Sica 1948: Monsieur Vincent – Maurice Cloche 1949: Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio De Sica 1950: The Walls of Malapaga – René Clément 1951: Rashomon – Akira Kurosawa 1952: Forbidden Games – René Clément 1954: Gate of Hell – Teinosuke Kinugasa 1955: Samurai, The Legend of Musashi – Hiroshi Inagaki

1956–1975	1956: La Strada – Federico Fellini 1957: Nights of Cabiria – Federico Fellini 1958: My Uncle – Jacques Tati 1959: Black Orpheus – Marcel Camus 1960: The Virgin Spring – Ingmar Bergman 1961: Through a Glass Darkly – Ingmar Bergman 1962: Sundays and Cybele – Serge Bourguignon 1963: 8½ – Federico Fellini 1964: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – Vittorio De Sica 1965: The Shop on Main Street – Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos 1966: A Man and a Woman – Claude Lelouch 1967: Closely Watched Trains – Jiří Menzel 1968: War and Peace – Sergei Bondarchuk 1969: Z – Costa-Gavras 1970: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion – Elio Petri 1971: The Garden of the Finzi Continis – Vittorio De Sica 1972: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Luis Buñuel 1973: Day for Night – François Truffaut 1974: Amarcord – Federico Fellini 1975: Dersu Uzala – Akira Kurosawa

1976–2000	1976: Black and White in Color – Jean-Jacques Annaud 1977: Madame Rosa – Moshé Mizrahi 1978: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs – Bertrand Blier 1979: The Tin Drum – Volker Schlöndorff 1980: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears – Vladimir Menshov 1981: Mephisto – István Szabó 1982: Volver a Empezar ('To Begin Again') – José Luis Garci 1983: Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman 1984: Dangerous Moves – Richard Dembo 1985: The Official Story – Luis Puenzo 1986: The Assault – Fons Rademakers 1987: Babette's Feast – Gabriel Axel 1988: Pelle the Conqueror – Bille August 1989: Cinema Paradiso – Giuseppe Tornatore 1990: Journey of Hope – Xavier Koller 1991: Mediterraneo – Gabriele Salvatores 1992: Indochine – Régis Wargnier 1993: Belle Époque – Fernando Trueba 1994: Burnt by the Sun – Nikita Mikhalkov 1995: Antonia's Line – Marleen Gorris 1996: Kolya – Jan Svěrák 1997: Character – Mike van Diem 1998: Life Is Beautiful – Roberto Benigni 1999: All About My Mother – Pedro Almodóvar 2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Ang Lee

2001–present	2001: No Man's Land – Danis Tanović 2002: Nowhere in Africa – Caroline Link 2003: The Barbarian Invasions – Denys Arcand 2004: The Sea Inside – Alejandro Amenábar 2005: Tsotsi – Gavin Hood 2006: The Lives of Others – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 2007: The Counterfeiters – Stefan Ruzowitzky 2008: Departures – Yōjirō Takita 2009: The Secret in Their Eyes – Juan J. Campanella 2010: In a Better World – Susanne Bier 2011: A Separation – Asghar Farhadi 2012: Amour – Michael Haneke 2013: The Great Beauty – Paolo Sorrentino 2014: Ida - Paweł Pawlikowski

Submissions

Goya Award for Best Director

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