Jose Luís Guerin

José Luis Guerin (1960), is one of Europe’s leading exponents of auteur cinema, due to his ability to create unique, poetic works that constantly renew cinematic language and the idea of beauty itself. After directing a series of short films between 1976 and 1981, Guerin made his feature-film debut with Berta’s Motives (1985) which won a number of awards, including the Quality Prize from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Sant Jordi (RNE) Prize. This film was followed by the documentary Innisfree (1990), which looks at the traces that the filming of John Ford’s movie The Quiet Man (1952) had left behind in the Irish town where it was shot. Train of Shadows (1997) is a meditation on filming from its very origins, as a living memory or a recreation of fictions.

José Luis Guerin’s film En construcción (Work in Progress, 2001) brought him to a wider audience and won the Goya Award for Best Documentary Feature, the Special Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize at the San Sebastián Festival and the 2001 Spanish National Cinematography Prize, for a film that made experimental and emotive forays into the real.

In 2007 Guerin made Unas fotos en la ciudad de Sylvia (Photos in the City of Sylvia) as well as the feature In the City of Sylvia (2007) which was screened at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival. In 2007 he also created the photo-installation Las mujeres que no conocemos (Women We Don’t Know) for the Spanish Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. His following works are Guest (2010), which was filmed on locations around the world over a one-year period and was screened at the Venice Festival, and the exhibition installation La dama de Corinto (The Lady from Corinth).