Juan Marsé

A collection of documentaries on the most outstanding figures of 20th century Spanish culture.

Life and work of Antonio Perez, important personality of Spanish culture because of its relationship with key artistic and social events that occurred in Spain since the early fifties. Unique character, Antonio Perez developed an interesting activity as an artist-editor-collector. It is precisely this aspect of "search objects" which he equated with contemporary artists such as Duchamp.

In 1939, Ramón was a young man, caught up in his Barcelona family's involvement on the Republic side in the brutal Spanish Civil War. He and his family fled into exile ahead of Franco's troops. Now it is many years later, and he has come back to see how his old homestead fared in the intervening years. The only person he can find who is able to remember those years clearly is his family's old butler Claudio.

From his office in Barcelona, where he usually works, Spanish writer Juan Marsé speaks of his novels, the movies that have been made from them, their relations with the classic American cinema and its influence on his narrative.

Loris is a young man who begins a romance with Francisca, his piano teacher, a forty-year-old who lives dominated by her mother, who was a successful soprano in her youth. Loris goes to live at Francisca's house. They will have as neighbor a sexual obsessive, fan of carnivorous plants and spying on people with binoculars. When they are preparing a trip, Francisca's mother shows up at the house. Her initial indignation soon gives way to a great interest for the young man, which will provoke the terrible jealousy of Francisca.

On the occasion of awarding the Cervantes Prize to the Catalan writer Juan Marsé on 23 April 2009, family members, friends and writers offer a sincere portrait of the best chronicler of life in Barcelona, Catalonia, during the post-war period and the worst days of the General Franco dictatorship, in the forties and fifties, and during the economic development and the hard conquest of freedom, in the sixties and seventies.

A collection of documentaries on the most outstanding figures of 20th century Spanish culture.

In 1939, Ramón was a young man, caught up in his Barcelona family's involvement on the Republic side in the brutal Spanish Civil War. He and his family fled into exile ahead of Franco's troops. Now it is many years later, and he has come back to see how his old homestead fared in the intervening years. The only person he can find who is able to remember those years clearly is his family's old butler Claudio.

Loris is a young man who begins a romance with Francisca, his piano teacher, a forty-year-old who lives dominated by her mother, who was a successful soprano in her youth. Loris goes to live at Francisca's house. They will have as neighbor a sexual obsessive, fan of carnivorous plants and spying on people with binoculars. When they are preparing a trip, Francisca's mother shows up at the house. Her initial indignation soon gives way to a great interest for the young man, which will provoke the terrible jealousy of Francisca.

A small-time delinquent young man and a book saleswoman at home delivery, who occasionally engage in prostitution as a derivative of her work, try a way of coexistence on the basis of mutual freedom schemes.