Víctor Erice
Encyclopedia
Víctor Erice Aras is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
) is a Spanish film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
.
He studied law, political science, and economics at the University of Madrid. He also attended the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografia in 1963 to study film direction. He wrote film criticism and reviews for the Spanish film journal Nuestro Cine, and made a series of short films before making his first feature film, The Spirit of the Beehive
The Spirit of the Beehive
The Spirit of the Beehive is a 1973 Spanish drama film directed by Victor Erice. The film was Erice's debut and is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema...
(1973), a critical portrait of the rural Spain of the 1940s.
Ten years later, Erice wrote and directed The South (1982), based on a story from Adelaida García Morales, considered a masterpiece although the producer Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta is a Spanish film producer.-Biography:He was a soccer player in Real Sociedad.Father of Gracia Querejeta. He has produced the best of Spanish films in 60's and 70's. He has worked with Carlos Saura in 11 films, Víctor Erice in 2 films, Montxo Armendáriz in 4 times or Fernando León...
only allowed him to film the first two-thirds of the story. His third movie, The Quince Tree Sun (1992) is a documentary about painter Antonio López García
Antonio López García
Antonio López García is a Spanish painter and sculptor, known for his realistic style. He is criticized by some art critics for neo-academism, but praised by others, like Robert Hughes, who consider him a master realist. His style sometimes is deemed hyperrealistic...
. The film won the Jury Prize
Jury Prize (Cannes Film Festival)
The Jury Prize is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival. It is chosen by the jury from the 'official section' of movies at the festival. It is considered the third most prestigious prize at the film festival, after the Palme d'Or and the Grand Prix....
and the FIPRESCI Prize
FIPRESCI
The International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
1992 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Gérard Depardieu *John Boorman *Carlo Di Palma *Jamie Lee Curtis *Joële Van Effenterre *Lester James Peries *Nana Djordjadze *Pedro Almodóvar *René Cleitman...
.
He was a member of the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival
2010 Cannes Film Festival
The 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 12 to May 23, 2010, in Cannes, France. The Cannes Film Festival, hailed as being one of the most recognized and prestigious film festivals worldwide, was founded in 1946. It consists of having films screened in and out of competition during the...
in May.
Critics
Geoff Andrew, in the Time Out Film Guide, praises Erice's contribution to Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (Lifeline) as "quite masterly", adding "it only makes you wish he worked more frequently". Excluding that short film, he has produced only three major works: El Espíritu de la Colmena (1973, The Spirit of the Beehive), El SurEl Sur (film)
The South , is a 1983 drama film , the second film of the perfectionist Spanish auteur Víctor Erice. It was voted the sixth best Spanish film by professionals and critics in 1996 Spanish cinema centenary...
(1983, The South) and El Sol del Membrillo (1992, The Quince Tree Sun). The critical reception of his work both inside Spain and internationally has been almost unanimously enthusiastic, with many hailing his sparse contributions to cinema as visually poetic masterpieces. Critic Tony Rayns
Tony Rayns
Antony Rayns is a British writer, commentator, film festival programmer and screenwriter. Much inspired in his youth by the films of Kenneth Anger, he wrote for the underground publication Cinema Rising before contributing to the Monthly Film Bulletin from the December 1970 issue until its demise...
describes El espíritu de la colmena as "a haunting mood piece that dispenses with plot and works its spells through intricate patterns of sound and image" and of El Sur it has been said that "Erice creates his film as a canvas, conjuring painterly images of slow dissolves and shafts of light that match Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
in their power to animate a scene of stillness, or freeze one of mad movement."
Filmography
- El Espíritu de la Colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973)
- El Sur (1983)
- El Sol del Membrillo (The Quince Tree Sun, 1992)