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Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi poses with his Goya Award.
In Franco's Spain there were film-makers determined to open the screens to other ways of understanding images. One of these film-makers was producer, director and script writer Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi. He made possible for Spanish cinema to be considered in the international markets.
Isasi-Isasmendi was born in Madrid in 1927 but worked mostly in Barcelona. A man with cinema in his blood, his mother (Nieves Lasa) was a theatre actress he started young by dubbing cartoon characters when he was a boy. This was the start of a career which allowed him to discover the process of creation of a film in all its phases. His early work in the film industry was a great learning experience for him which finished in the creation of his own film production company, from which he promoted Spanish creativity through popular genres such as police thrillers (La Huida, 1955. The Escape), action (Sentencia Contra Una Mujer, 1960, Sentence to a Woman) or even social messages like he did with Tierra de Todos, 1961, Everybody's Land where he visited the wounds of the Civil War.
Estambul 65 (Istanbul 65), Las Vegas, 500 Millones (Las Vegas, 500 million), and Un Verano para Matar (A Summer To Kill) are the clearest example of his cinema without frontiers. In Estambul 65 (Istanbul 65) he visited with great irony the Bond fever which was taking place everywhere in the world. Las Vegas, 500 Millones (Las Vegas, 500 million), and Un Verano para Matar (A Summer To Kill) gave him the chance to work with renowned actors like Elke Sommer, Jack Palance, Karl Malden and Olivia Hussey and make Spanish cinema for the whole world.
This is maybe the best legacy Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi has left to the Spanish Cinema, which now triumphs outside of its frontiers and which now awards him back with the 1999 Goya Film Awards as a big thank you to the ambassador of Spanish Cinema.
Relato Policiaco
1954- Relato Policiaco (Police Tale)
1955- La huida (The Escape)
1956- Pasion Bajo el Sol (Passion Under the Sun)
Rapsodia de Sangre
1957- Rapsodia de Sangre (Blood Rhapsody)
1958- Diego Corrientes
Sentencia Contra Una Mujer
1960
- La Mentira Tiene Cabellos Rojos (Lies Have Red Hair)
- Sentencia Contra Una Mujer (Sentence to a Woman)
Tierra de Todos
1961- Tierra de Todos (Everybody's Land)
Vamos a Contar Mentiras
1962- Vamos a Contar Mentiras (Let's Tell Lies)
1963- La Mascara de Scaramouche (Scaramouche's Mask)
Estambul 65
1965- Estambul 65 (Istambul 65)
Las Vegas, 500 Millones
1968- Las vegas, 500 Millones (Las Vegas, 500 Million)
1972- Un Verano Para Matar (A Summer to Kill)
1974- Rafael en Raphael (Rafael in Raphael)
El Perro
1977- El Perro (The Dog)
El Aire de un Crimen
1988- El Aire de un Crimen (The Air of a Crime)