Carlos Saura

Thrust into the international spotlight in 1966 when The Hunt, his critique of the Franco regime, won the Silver Bear at Berlin, Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura (b. 1932) has remained an abiding presence and frequent victor at worldwide cinema competitions ever since. He is well known for his Flamenco trilogy -- Blood Wedding, Carmen, and A Love Bewitched. He received Oscar nominations for Mama Turns a Hundred, Carmen, and Tango. Saura's movies are frequently ambiguous, sometimes controversial, and always narratively complex. In many of his films, such as Cria and Goya in Bordeaux, he creates sophisticated expressions of time and space by fusing reality with fantasy, past with present, and memory with hallucination. Book jacket.

Linda M. Willem is professor of Spanish at Butler University