De Salamanca a ninguna parte

In 1955, the young Juan Antonio Bardem exclaimed: “Spanish cinema is politically inefficient, socially untruthful, intellectually mediocre, aesthetically lousy and industrially rickety” at the 1955 Salamanca Conference. Official news archives, interviews and film excerpts tell of a “lost generation” of young filmmakers, who demand that cinema express reality and who struggle for a free and innovative film movement, against the Franquist caciques. The New Spanish Cinema disappeared in the mid-60s, lost between renunciation and retreat into clandestinity. Yet, it left behind some major films, including Patino’s Nueve cartas a Berta and Carlos Saura’s Los Golfos (1962).