Berlanga reinterpreted by five national design awards with a view to the Goya

The influence of Luis García Berlanga's cinema on the Spanish collective imagination is undeniable, especially for the generations that have grown up watching his films. Like the talented generation of the five national design awards, born throughout the 1950s in the Valencian Community, who have now lent themselves to reinterpreting five posters from as many films, the most iconic, by the filmmaker who died in 2010 Javier Mariscal, Daniel Nebot, Nacho Lavernia, Marisa Gallén and Pepe Gimeno undertook their first steps in the trade under the yoke of the Franco dictatorship, which incisively and grotesquely X-rayed Berlanga in its cinema despite the censorship, and gave rein unleashes his creativity with the arrival of democracy, which the director also portrayed.

The designers have invented mascots, signs, letters, brands, bottles, books, wine labels or slippers and have now reinvented the posters for

,

,

and

, with a result that synthesizes their works and the essence of the films.

The reason for this unique initiative is the acts of homage for the centenary of Berlanga's birth, which began last year and will close next Saturday with the Goya Awards ceremony at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia.

'The national shotgun', according to Marisa Gallén, and 'Plácido', by Mariscal.

The new posters will be exhibited at the Palau de la Generalitat (on the weekends of February and March), after being presented this Monday by the Valencian president, Ximo Puig, and the five designers, supported by other colleagues.

This year, in addition, Valencia celebrates its designation as World Design Capital.

Dani Nebot (National Design Award in 1995) has interpreted the film

with a poster in which he has tried to capture the essence of a film that portrays "with the finest irony the grotesque post-war society and Spanish hunger ”, as well as “the miseries of the human being”.

He has commented that the town where he was born, Barracas, in Castellón, was hardly different from the famous and imaginary Villar del Río, where the action of the film takes place.

Javier Mariscal (awarded in 1999) has honored

and, as he has acknowledged, he has had to “apply the handbrake” to avoid the baroque style that he likes so much and put the focus on a “

gulf ” sitting at a table.

He has agreed with Nacho Lavernia (awarded in 2012) that the reinterpretation of the posters has been an invitation to reflect on graphic language.

Lavernia has been in charge of

, a work with which you laugh, but in the end you see that it is "an enormous tragedy" and one of the "hardest" films of Berlanga's cinema.

He has remembered the author of the original poster, Macario Gómez, and has chosen to show the executioner in the center of the poster, surrounded by "a closed society, gray and full of prejudices", which the designer represents in the form of a pre-constitutional flag cut into pieces and placed in a “very chaotic” way as a

, with “the threatening and hateful presence of the eaglet”.

The designers Dani Nebot and Javier Abascal, the Valencian president Ximo Puig, and the also designers Nacho Lavernia and Marisa Gallén and Pepe Gimeno, this Monday at the Palau de la Generalitat.Rober Solsona (Europa Press)

Marisa Gallén (awarded in 2019) initially did not like the film she had received,

but when she started working she realized that she had "won the lottery" because the icons of the shotgun and the national flag worked for him graphically "like a thousand wonders".

Thus, she has tried to represent "those elites of late Francoism who meet to do business and shenanigans" through the image of a "joke" shotgun, from whose shot a Spanish flag with the onomatopoeia "bang" comes out.

Pepe Gimeno (awarded 2020) has reinterpreted the film

using typography to turn the name of the film into a heifer and nail two banderillas on it, one with the colors of the national flag and the other with those of the Republican flag.

The president of the Generalitat has highlighted the figure of Berlanga, of whom he has said that many times he was cornered, mistaking his irony for frivolity, when there was in his cinema "neither frivolity nor superficiality", but "high intellectual solvency".

Puig has also praised the value of Valencian design and creativity.