2023-10-06 11:43:00
The historic director of photography, film restorer and Catalan researcher Juan Mariné will receive in 2024 the highest recognition from the Film Academy, its Goya of Honor, which will be awarded to him in Valladolid on February 10. The academy has decided to grant him this award “for his complete dedication to cinema during more than eighty years of experience 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 Mariné 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 funeral of the anarchist revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti in 1936 and photographed the first Spanish film in color, “La “cat” (1956)
Recognized with the National Cinematography Award, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts, the National Photography Award, the Second Chomón Award, the Spike of Honor from the Seminci of Valladolid, the Juan de la Cierva Research Award and the Medal of Gold from the Academy, among other awards, Juan Mariné began working in the seventh art at just 14 years old and, when he turned a century of life, he continued working in his laboratory at 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 join the institution – this explorer of the image collaborated with filmmakers such as Edgar Neville, José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, Antonio del Amo, José María Forqué, Pedro Lazaga and Pedro Masó in the more than 150 films he photographed – the last one was “La grieta”, by Juan Piquer Simón.
And to talk about this veteran professional who for years worked in restoration at the Spanish Film Library and who has researched and invented techniques with which to improve image quality is to go through the history of Spanish cinema.
Affiliated with the CNT union, Mariné recorded Buenaventura Durruti’s funeral by hand because the camera batteries ran out; He was a war photographer for Enrique Líster and was interned in the French concentration camps of Saint-Ciprien and Argelès-sur-Mer.
He traveled as a prisoner from San Sebastián to Cádiz; He entered the La Rinconada prison camp (Seville), where he left thanks to his father’s contacts, and was a photographer for the General Staff of Catalonia, a position he combined with jobs 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 “Four Women” by Antonio del Amo and worked under the orders of numerous filmmakers.
Decade by decade, he added titles, including 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 at the Filmoteca Española.
When he left photography direction 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-Mariné’, in the words of the center’s students, where he investigated, cleaned and restored the celluloid.
The subject of several documentaries, this essential figure of our audiovisual heritage is awaiting the premiere of “Juan Mariné. A century of cinema”, documentary film written and directed by María Luisa Pujol endorsed by the Aula de Cine Fundación Josep M. Queraltó Collection, of which Mariné is one of its Honorary Patrons.
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