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This tribute to the moviemaker coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Golden Shell going to ‘El espíritu de la colmena’
The filmmaker Víctor Erice (Karrantza, Bizkaia. 1940) will receive a Donostia Award at the 71st edition of the San Sebastian Festival. The presentation ceremony will take place on Friday 29 September at the Victoria Eugenia Theatre, followed by the screening of his latest film, Cerrar los ojos / Close Your Eyes, 50 years after he bagged the Golden Shell for his first solo feature film, El espíritu de la colmena The Spirit of the Beehive.
Six years ago, the Festival launched a line of Donostia Awards going to moviemakers whose contribution to the art of film is indisputable, such as Agnès Varda (2017), Hirokazu Kore-eda (2018), Costa-Gavras (2019) and David Cronenberg (2022). San Sebastian Festival’s highest honorary accolade pays tribute in 2023 to a filmmaker who, with only four feature films to his name, has garnered the Silver Shell for Best Director, Golden Shell for Best Film and the Jury and International Film Critics Prizes at the Festival de Cannes, among many other distinctions.
Víctor Erice’s career has always had its reflection at the San Sebastian Festival. His directorial debut, filming one of the three episodes of Los desafíos (1969) with José Luis Egea and Claudio Guerín, was selected for the Official Selection and received the Silver Shell for Best Director. Four years later, with his first solo feature, El espíritu de la colmena / The Spirit of Beehive (1973), he was acknowledged with the Golden Shell. El sol del membrillo / Dream of Light (1992) was selected for the Made in Spain section, after receiving the Jury and International Film Critics’ Prizes in Cannes, while the anthology film Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet screened in Zabaltegi in 2002.
Finally, after the Donostia Award gala, the Festival will show Cerrar los ojos / Close Your Eyes, following its screening at the Cannes and Toronto festivals, a film about memory woven around an unfinished film and the mysterious disappearance of an actor. The actress Ana Torrent, who starred in El espíritu de la colmena at the age of 6, and once again works with Erice in Cerrar los ojos, will present the filmmaker with the statuette. The film will have its general release in cinemas throughout Spain on the same date as the Donostia Award gala, on 29 September.
Tickets for the Donostia Award gala prior to the screening of Cerrar los ojos, will go on sale on 4 September.
A famous Spanish actor, Julio Arenas, vanishes during a movie shoot. Although his body is never found, the police conclude that he had some kind of an accident on the seashore. Several years down the line, this mystery of sorts returns to front page news when a TV programme looking back at the actor shows exclusive images of the last scenes in which he participated, filmed by his close friend, the director Miguel Garay..
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Karrantza Harana (Bizkaia), Víctor Erice spent his childhood and early adolescence in San Sebastian.
In 1961, in Madrid, he enrolled in the Official Film School, graduating with a diploma in Directing in 1963.
He made his directorial debut shooting an episode of Los desafíos, which carried off the Silver Shell in 1969 at the San Sebastian Festival.
In 1973 he directed, and wrote with Angel Fernández Santos, El espíritu de la colmena / The Spirit of the Beehive, Golden Shell for Best Film at the San Sebastian Festival.
His second film, El Sur / The South, screened in the Official Selection at the Festival de Cannes in 1983, receiving the Golden Hugo at Chicago Film Festival that same year.
In 1990, with the artist Antonio López, he made El sol del membrillo / Dream of Light, Jury and International Film Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1992, voted best film of the decade by film archives and cultural centres worldwide.
In 2002 he shot Alumbramiento, an episode of the feature film Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet.
In 2005, with the filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami he featured in the Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondencias Exhibition showing in Barcelona (CCCB), Madrid (Casa Encendida), Paris (Centre Pompidou) and Melbourne (ACMI). The exhibition included audiovisual correspondence between the two directors, as well as the medium-length La morte rouge, in which Erice looked back at his first experience as a cinema spectator in San Sebastian’s Gran Kursaal Theatre-Cinema.
In the following years he worked on video installations: Fragor del mundo, silencio de la pintura (Centre Pompidou), about the painter Antonio López, and Piedra y Cielo (Bilbao Fine Arts Museum), on the funerary stele by sculptor Jorge Oteiza, dedicated to the musician Aita Donostia on mount Agiña (Lesaka).
In 2012, with the filmmakers Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa and Aki Kaurismäki, as part of the feature film Centro histórico, he made Vidros partidos in Portugal.
Víctor Erice has harvested myriad public acknowledgements. Among them, the National Cinematography Prize in 1993; the Golden Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts in 1995; Honorary Leopard for outstanding achievement in cinema received at Locarno Festival in 2014.
Erice has taught extensively in the shape of courses, seminars and workshops. Ever since he joined the Editorial Board of the magazine Nuestro Cine until today, his articles in newspapers, magazines and books have been frequent; he has also given talks and lectures in widely varying locations.
Cerrar los ojos, his fourth feature, can be seen at a special screening in the Victoria Eugenia Theatre, the same place where Erice showed El espíritu de la colmena / The Spirit of the Beehive fifty years ago.
Filmmakers José Luis Egea, Víctor Erice and Claudio Guerín at the María Cristina Hotel (‘Los desafíos’, 1969). Photograph: Artxiboa (San Sebastian Festival Archive)
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