Press release
Round Table: ‘Spanish cinema in Almería’
26th, April 2007
The Spanish film industry remembered Almería when, starting in the 1980s, the reverberations from the film boom in Almeria during the 60s and 70s had died down, a boom that turned these barren lands into the Spanish Hollywood thanks to the shooting of numerous westerns and adventure super-productions. A large handful of Spanish filmmakers used the Almerian landscape as an appropriate setting for their stories. The post-end of Almeria took on the part of Almeria; it no longer had to dress itself up as a city in the Far West or an exotic country.Of the many Spanish films made on Almerian soil over these past 27 years, we will mention the most important. The brilliant Carlos Saura came through here in August 1980 to film a sunrise on the Los Escullos beach for Deprisa, deprisa. In October of 1983, the journalist Pedro Costa shot some scenes of the capital and of the province, though with some incidents, during the filming of his opera prima El caso Almeria, which was based on true facts. In 1988, the El Perdigal beach was featured in a scene from Miss Caribe, by Fernando Colomo. One part of Jaime Chavárri’s Las cosas del querer (1988) takes place on a beach in Mónsul and the Old square of the capital. In April 1989, the young filmmaker Felipe Vega shot El mejor de los tiempos in the enclaves of El Ejido. Six months later, another young director, Paco Periñán from Cadiz, started work on his first film Contra el viento in Rodalquilar and its surroundings.
In 1990 came the shooting of Las cartas de Alou, a drama about immigrants from Montxo Armendáriz. San José, among other places, was chosen by Pilar Miró for the film El pájaro de la felicidad (1992). Mariano Barroso did several scenes of Extasis from June 12 to 17, 1995, with a rebellious Javier Bardem, who lived on a beach (Las Salinas de Cabo de Gata) with his close friends. A country house in Mojácar is a place for relaxing and meeting for the main characters of Martín (Hache) (1996) by Adolfo Aristarain. The bright Almerian sky was well used by the director of photography Porfirio Enríquez. The acclaimed Pedro Almodóvar set a scene from Talk to Her (2001) on the beach of Mónsul. And in 2002, Alex de la Iglesia stirred up Almería with 800 balas and Chus Gutiérrez chose spots in Cabo de Gata for Poniente, which was described by the director as a universal tale about love and indifference.
José Márquez Úbeda
Film Professor and Historian