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The 2004 Film-History Prizes awarded to the biography about the film-maker Francisco Elias and to the study of Spanish films produced in Germany during the Civil War

By 3 de February de 2005November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 03.02.2005

The 2004 Film-History Prizes awarded to the biography about the film-maker Francisco Elias and to the study of Spanish films produced in Germany during the Civil War

The of the UB, located at the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB, Barcelona Science Park), has awarded the 2004 prize ex aequo for the best research on film history to the books «Aproximación histórica al cineasta Francisco Elías Riquelme (1890-1977)» by Enrique Sánchez Oliveira, professor of Film Studies at the University of Seville, and «La intervención velada. El apoyo cinematográfico alemán al bando franquista (1936-1939)», by Manuel Nicolás Meseguer, researcher at the University of Murcia.

Published from his doctoral thesis work on the film-maker Francisco Elías, the book by Enrique Sánchez has been granted this award for giving a critical biography of one of the pioneers in talking movies in Spain. Maker of the first Spanish talking movie «El misterio de la Puerta del Sol» (1929) and founder of talking film studies “Orphea Films” in Barcelona 1932, Francisco Elías was responsible for Spanish film-making in the republican Generalitat (regional government) of the CNT, before emigrating to Mexico. There he continued making films until his return to Spain in 1948. Among his productions are «María de la O» (1936) and «Marta» (1954), his last film.

The second prize has been granted to the book entitled «La intervención velada. El apoyo cinematográfico alemán al bando franquista (1936-1939)», a monograph about the production of Spanish films in Germany during the Civil War. The prize has been presented in recognition of the contribution of this book to the little known Spanish film industry in this period. It describes how, through film agreements between the Nazi and Spanish government, renowned Spanish film makers went to Berlin to produce films. Some of the titles in this period were «El barbero de Sevilla» and «Suspiros de España» (1938) by Benito Perojo, and «Carmen la de Triana» (1939) and «La canción de Aixa» (1939) by Florián Rey. To write this book, the researcher Nicolás Meseguer carried out a meticulous study of the archives of Spain and Germany to report the relationship between the political interests of the two regimes and the film-making industry.