Jose Luis Cuerda

José Luis Cuerda Martínez (Albacete, February 18, 1947-Madrid, February 4, 2020) was a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.

Key figure in Spanish cinema of the XX century and the beginning of the XXI, is considered one of its most important directors, having directed films such as La lengua de las mariposas, adaptation of a story by Manuel Rivas, < i>The Animated Forest, a version of the homonymous novel by Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, and the “surruralism” trilogy, made up of Total, Amanece, que no es poco i> —the top comedy of Spanish cinema— and Así en el cielo como en la tierra, which is, according to Cuerda himself, “a twisting of reality that continues to be reality”.

He has received numerous recognitions, including four Goya awards, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts and the Great Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X.

Biography

He was born in Albacete on February 18, 1947. As a child he entered the seminary, where he remained for three years. He began to study law, which he abandoned to become a radio and television broadcasting technician after moving to Madrid in 1962. In 1969 he started working at TVE, where he collaborated in the news services and, later, he went on to direct cultural programs. In 1977, he made his debut as a fiction director with the adaptation for Spanish Television of El túnel, based on the novel by Ernesto Sabato. Also for TVE, in 1977 he made the feature film Bad streak , based on his own script; It is a unique film, with surprising dramatic and emotional power.

Outside television, in 1982 he directed his first feature film for the cinema, Pares y nones, which placed him among the directors of the so-called "Madrid comedy" (Fernando Colomo is another of its most important representatives). Between 1985 and 1989 he worked as a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Salamanca.

His next film, The Animated Forest (1987), inaugurated a new stage in his career characterized by what can be called «absurd humor». A year later, the work that consecrated him as a filmmaker appeared, as well as being a box office success: Amanece, que no es poco (1988). With Así en el cielo como en la tierra (1995) a kind of trilogy was completed with absurd humor as a common element, which had begun with Total.

In his production role, he was the first producer and, in a way, the discoverer of Alejandro Amenábar. He produced his films Thesis (1996) and Open Your Eyes (1997).

With La lengua de las mariposas (1999) presents a tender and at the same time stark vision of the Spanish Civil War from the relationship of a child with his teacher.

He also stands out in his role as a film producer, doing this work in several of his films and in three of the first feature films by Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (Tesis, Open your eyes and The Others); In addition to being the scriptwriter for most of his behind-the-scenes productions.

He directed the second season of the series Makinavaja (1997) for television, based on the popular character created by Ivà.

In 2011-2012 he was part of the X edition of the Notodofilmfest short film festival with the category “Una peli de… José Luis Cuerda"; In it, Cuerda proposed a footnote that had to be taken as a basis to make the short films presented in that section. Cuerda himself chose the winner, the short Rigor, by David Galán Galindo and Óscar Arenas.

At the end of 2017, he began filming what would be his last film, Tiempo después, released on December 28, 2018. In 2019 he received the Premios de Honor de las Premios Feroz.

José Luis Cuerda died on February 4, 2020, at the age of 72, of an embolism at the Hospital de la Princesa in Madrid. The Government of Spain awarded him the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X posthumously. In 2023 a monument in his honor was inaugurated in the historic Plaza del Altozano in Albacete.

In April 2023, his daughters donated the filmmaker's personal archive to the Ministry of Culture and Sports, with the Spanish Film Library being responsible for its preservation, cataloging, and digitization.

Filmography

Films as director

José Luis Cuerda in the photocall of Alice in Wonderland in 2010.

• 1977 - The tunnel (Spanish Television film based on Ernesto Sabato's homonymous novel)
• 1977 - Bad streak (Spanish Television film)
• 1982 - Pairs and nones
• 1983 - Total (TV)
• 1987 - The animated forest (adaption of the homonymous novel by Wenceslao Fernández Flórez)
• 1988 - It dawns, it's not little
• 1991 - Captain Estrada's widow
• 1992 - The marrana
• 1993 - Touching background
• 1995 - So in heaven as on earth
• 1999 - The language of the butterflies (based on Manuel Rivas accounts)
• 2000 - First love
• 2004 - By the sea run the hare (cortometraje included in There's reason!)
• 2006 - Fairy education
• 2008 - The blind sunflowers
• 2012 - Everything is silent
• 2018 - Time later (adaption of the homonymous novel of Cuerda himself)

Published Works

• It dawns, it's not littlePepitas de Calabaza, Logroño, 2013. ISBN 978-84-15862-08-6
• If you love a goat, you've got a lot ahead.Martinez Roca, 2013. ISBN 978-84-27039-83-4
• Time laterPepitas de Calabaza, Logroño, 2015. ISBN 978-84-15862-35-2
• Memories FritasPepitas de Calabaza, Logroño, 2019. ISBN 978-84-17386-43-6

Awards

Goya Awards

Ondas Awards

Fierce Awards

Distinctions and decorations

• Castile-La Mancha Gold Medal (2001)
• Gold Medal of Fine Arts (2002)
• Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X, titled posthumous (2020)
• Adoptive son of the province of Orense, in posthumous title (2021)