He liked to transform romantic material into pictorial material.
Spanish director Mario Camus, whose film
La Colmena
won first prize at the Berlin Film Festival, died on Saturday at the age of 86, the Spanish Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences announced on Saturday.
The filmmaker is said to have died in Santander, Cantabria, the Academy said in a message on social networks.
Author and director of around thirty feature films since the beginning of the 1960s, Mario Camus was awarded in 2011 with a Goya of honor - the equivalent of the Césars for Spanish cinema - for all of his work. long and rich career.
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Mario Camus, whose main films were inspired by great literary works, achieved worldwide notoriety for
La Colmena
(La Ruche
). Adapted from the sulphurous novel of the same name by the Spanish Nobel Prize winner Camilo José Cela, this feature film on the consequences of the Spanish Civil War, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1983. The following year, Mario Camus released
Los santos inocentes
(
The Innocent Saints
), adaptation of the Romande Miguel Delibes published in 1981. Depicting the daily life of a family of poor Extremaduran peasants exploited under Francoism, the film received the Special Mention of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Its two main actors, Francisco Rabal and Alfredo Landa, were jointly awarded the Best Actor Award.
His death came the day after the death, at age 95, of the Spanish playwright and screenwriter Alfonso Sastre, who openly criticized censorship during the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975). Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez paid tribute to them on Saturday, via Twitter. “
Those of us who love cinema and theater, we are in mourning today. We say goodbye to two great names in culture, Alfonso Sastre and Mario Camus. From our seats in the audience, we will continue to appreciate their extraordinary works
, he wrote.
My condolences to their families, their friends and to the world of culture
”.