2023-10-06 12:51:48
Updated Friday, October 6, 2023 – 12:51
They awarded him the award “for his entire dedication to cinema during more than 80 years of career that spans the history of Spanish cinema”
Juan Marin.JUAN MARIN THE ADVENTURE OF MAKING CINEMA Awards ‘As bestas’ sweeps everything at the 2023 Goya Awards
The historic photography director, film restorer and Catalan researcher Juan Marin receive in 2024 the highest recognition from the Film Academy, its Goya of Honor, which will be delivered to you in Valladolid on February 10.
The academy has decided to grant him this award “for his entire dedication to cinema for more than eighty years of career that spans the history of Spanish cinema, his efforts in the work of conservation and restoration and for vividly representing, through his craft, the importance of light in the history of our cinema”.
In a note provided to EFE by the Academy, Juan Marin says that, after surviving the Civil war, He swore that he would dedicate his life to cinema.
And he kept his word, since this centenarian man, born on December 31, 1920, has gone through all the milestones of Spanish cinema: he filmed the burial of the anarchist revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti in 1936 and photographed the first Spanish film in color, ‘La gata’ (1956)
Recognized with the National Cinematography Award, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts, the National Photography Award, the Second Chomán Award, the Spike of Honor from the Seminci of Valladolid, the Juan de la Cierva Research Award and the Medal of the Academy, among other awards, Juan Marín began working on the seventh art when he was only 14 years old and, when he turned a century old, he continued working in his laboratory in the ECAM, Film School of the Community of Madrid.
Unconditional of the activities carried out by the Film Academy – he was the first director of photography to enter the institution – this explorer of the image collaborated with filmmakers such as Edgar Neville, José Luis Senz de Heredia, Antonio del Amo, José María Forquí, Pedro Lazaga and Pedro Mas in the month of 150 films I photographed -The last one was “La grieta”, by Juan Piquer Simón-.
And talking about this veteran professional who for years worked in restoration in the Spanish Film Archive and that he has researched and invented techniques with which to improve the quality of the image is to go through the history of Spanish cinema.
Affiliated with the CNT union, Marin recorded Buenaventura Durruti’s funeral by hand because the camera’s batteries ran out; He was Enrique Lster’s war photographer and was interned in the French concentration camps of Saint-Ciprien and Argels-sur-Mer.
Your como preso de San Sebastian a Cdiz; entered the prison camp La Rinconada (Seville)from where he came out thanks to his father’s contacts, and was a photographer for the General Staff of Catalonia, a position he combined with work as a photography assistant in productions filmed in Barcelona.
He who is one of the most important, innovative and longest-lived directors of photography in the history of Spain debuted as a director of photography in ‘Cuatro mujeres’, by Antonio del Amo and worked under the orders of numerous filmmakers.
Decade by decade, he added titles, among which is the first color film in the history of Spain, “La gata”, he invented new photographic and film restoration techniques, such as an optical copier or a negative washing machine designed by himself, which he put into practice in the Spanish Film Library.
When he left the direction of photography in 1990, he was director of cinematography restoration at the Community of Madrid Film School, where he attended daily until 2020, the year the pandemic arrived. In the basement of the school he had his office – several rooms full of machines and film material -, the ‘sub-Marin’, in the words of the center’s students, where he researched, cleaned and restored celluloid.
The subject of several documentaries, this essential figure of our audiovisual heritage is awaiting the premiere of ‘Juan Marin. A century of cinemaa documentary film written and directed by Mara Luisa Pujol endorsed by the Fundacin Aula de Cine Coleccin Josep M. Queralt, of which Marin is one of its Honorary Patrons.
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