Skip to main content

Javier Fesser Biography

Javier Fesser

(Javier Fesser Pérez de Petinto; Madrid, 1964) Spanish filmmaker.After filming two remarkable comedies, he gained notoriety with the drama Camino (2008), a controversial film for its vision of religious fanaticism that won six Goya Awards in 2009.

Born in the Womb From a family with artistic concerns, Javier Fesser enrolled in naval engineering; Then he changed his studies for communication sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, although he would not get a degree either.In 1986 he created Línea Films, a company dedicated to making advertising spots, from which he developed campaigns for brands such as Telefónica or BMW.In 1992 he founded, with Luis Manso, the Pendelton Film production company, with the idea of ​​alternating advertising production with film production.

Javier Fesser

A at the same time that the television campaigns followed, Fesser began his journey in the cinema with the direction of short films.His debut could not have been more encouraging: his first short, Aquel ritmillo (1994), in which the dreamlike universe that would characterize his future productions is already appreciated, was his first great success, in addition to his first I work with one of his fetish actors, Luis Ciges. Aquel ritmillo won the Goya award for the best short fiction film in 1995, as well as the awards for the best short film at the Peñíscola Comic Film Festival (Castellón) and the audience at the European Film Festival of Angers (France).This first short was followed shortly after by El secdleto de la tlompeta (1995), a disconcerting narrative labyrinth with which Fesser corroborated his talent for directing and which was awarded in Clermont-Ferrand (France) and in Regensburg (Germany).

In 1998 Fesser presented his first feature film, El milagro de P.Tinto , a hilarious surrealist film with a script by Fesser himself and his brother Guillermo ( member of the humor group Gomaespuma).The film, starring Luis Ciges, was one of the box office successes of the season, with more than 1.3 million viewers, and made it known to the general public.It won the Goya award for the best special effects and was one of the nominees by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the category of best new direction.

At the dawn of the new century, Fesser created the Notodofilmfest festival, a competition for short films published on the Internet and which in 2009 reached its eighth edition.He signed the short film The little surprise and the fourteen-chapter series for the network Javi and Lucy ; released in December 2000, it exceeded two million downloads.He soon embarked on what would be his second film, The Great Adventure of Mortadelo and Filemón (2003), an adaptation-also with his brother Guillermo-of the popular comic book characters created by Francisco Ibáñez.Backed by his debut feature and by the popularity of Ibáñez's strips, success was immediate, and the film became one of the highest grossing in the history of Spanish cinema, with 5.5 million viewers.He also obtained five Goya awards (best editing, best artistic direction, best production direction, best special effects and best makeup and hairdressing).

After this blazing success, Fesser changed his third to undertake a charity project.He signed, with Chus Gutiérrez, Patricia Ferreira, Pere Joan Ventura and Javier Corcuera, the collective documentary In the world at a time , five stories that addressed the five priorities of Unicef.The result of their contribution was Binta y la gran idea (2004), a short shot in various locations on the banks of the Casamance, in southern Senegal, which emphasized the need to educate girls.In Senegal, he would also compile material for another production, Zero Seven (2005), a particular update of Don Quijote de la Mancha commissioned by the Ingenio 400 project. Binta y la gran idea received critical acclaim and was nominated for the Oscar for best short film in the 2007 edition.

In 2005, Fesser also directed the short film The cabin and published the short novel Three days in the Valley.My Benedictine experience .The following year he was the scriptwriter of Cándida , a film with the one that his brother Guillermo made his film debut.After the commercial successes of his first two feature films, Javier Fesser decided to take a radical turn in his cinematographic career and undertook what to date has been his most ambitious project: Camino .

Camino (2008)

The director (this time also a screenwriter, producer and editor) addressed the case of a girl in this film sick with cancer whose mother, an Opus Dei activist, tries to make her see that her illness is a blessing from God.Inspired by the real case of Alexia González-Barros (and also in others, as he would have to clarify later), the film was presented in the official section of the San Sebastián Festival, where it was widely supported by critics.It premiered on October 17, 2008 and sparked a heated controversy when the Opus Dei Information Office in Spain accused the director of "distorting" reality and offering a "false and manipulated" X-ray of the institution.Likewise, the minor's family publicly disagreed with the development of the film, and asked Fesser to explicitly clarify that the girl did not die as the film says (with applause and a sour priest shouting).

The truth is that the director had to issue a statement in which he recalled that the tape was a fiction and that the real events on which it was inspired "belong to several cases" and not just Alexia's." Camino -he said-aims to be an objective story, without prejudice or stereotypes." Despite the controversy raised and not starting as a favorite, Camino was the great winner of the 2009 Goya Awards, awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Spain, obtaining six of the seven awards To which it was nominated: best film, direction, leading actress (Carme Elías), supporting actor (Jordi Dauder), revelation actress (Nerea Camacho), original script and special effects.It had previously won the award for best film at the XIX José María Forqué Film Awards.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Francisco Galí Biography

Francisco Galí (Seville, 1539-Mexico, 1591) Spanish navigator.In 1582 he undertook a trip to the coast of North America by order of the viceroy of Mexico Pedro Moya.He explored some of the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, the coast of Baja California and the San Francisco Bay.He wrote an account of his travels.
Post a Comment
Read more

Joseph Kasavubu Biography

Joseph Kasavubu (Tshela, 1910-Boma, 1969) Politician of Zaire.Defender of the interests of the Congolese vis-à-vis Belgium and of their independence, he actively participated in organizations aimed at achieving these ends, mainly in ABAKO (the nationalist movement "Alianza de Bakongo").He was the first president of the newly proclaimed Republic from 1960 to 1965, once independence from Belgium was achieved. Joseph Kasavubu In an early stage of his life, influenced perhaps by the education received from the Catholic missionaries, he served as a lay teacher.Subsequently, in 1942, he became a senior officer in the civil service, the most important position that a native of the Congo could access within the Belgian colonial administration.At the end of that decade he turned all his efforts into different Congolese independence movements that fought against the Belgian authorities, at the head of cultural organizations and student groups that were really masked political fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hasday ibn Shaprut Biography

Hasday ibn Shaprut (Jaén, 915-Córdoba, 970) Hebraic-Spanish politician and patron.He was in the service of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III and actively intervened in his foreign policy.Appointed head of the Jewish aljamas of al-Andalus, he maintained relations with the eastern and North African Talmudic schools.Patron of his coreligionists, he laid the foundations of Jewish development in al-Andalus.
Post a Comment
Read more

Jean Jacques Dessalines Biography

Jean Jacques Dessalines (Guinea, 1758-Jacmel, 1806) Emperor of Haiti (1804-1806).A slave in the French colony of Santo Domingo, he adopted the name of his master, from whom he fled in 1789.Two years later, at the outbreak of the black revolution led by Toussaint Louverture, he took his side; organized one of the slave bands that rejected the British invasion attempt and collaborated in the formation of a black state. Jean Jacques Dessalines In 1802 an army sent by Napoleon, under the command of French general Charles Leclerc, overthrew Toussaint Louverture.Dessalines had to accept the deposition and deportation of Toussaint Louverture and surrender to Leclerc, who entrusted him with command of the southern sector of the island.But when Napoleon's intention to reinstate slavery became evident in 1803, Dessalines, taking advantage of the weakness of the French army and with British help, led a rebellion that drove the French from the island. That same year a a congress held ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jose Zorrilla Biography

José Zorrilla (Valladolid, 1817-Madrid, 1893) Spanish writer.It is the main representative of medieval and legendary romanticism.In 1833 he entered the University of Toledo as a law student, and in 1835 he went to the University of Valladolid.José Zorrilla published his first verses in the Valladolid newspaper El Artista . José Zorrilla In Madrid, after abandoning his university career, he achieved fame after reading some of his verses at the funeral of Larra (1837).He held the position of the latter in the writing of El Español , where he published the series of poems entitled Poesías (1837), the first of a set of eight volumes that he completed in 1840.His poetic success would be renewed in 1852 with a descriptive poem, Granada , which remained unfinished.In 1839 he married Matilde O'Reilly, of whom he was widowed very soon.
Post a Comment
Read more

Gerard walschap Biography

Gerard Walschap (Londerzeel, Flanders, 1898-Antwerp, 1989) Belgian writer in the Flemish language.His novels dealt with, from a strictly religious perspective, the political, moral and existential conflicts of the present time.The trilogy The Roothooft Family (1929-1933); Sister Virgilia (1951), his masterpiece; Rebellion in the Congo (1953) and Alter ego (1964).He also wrote plays, poems and essays.
Post a Comment
Read more

Johann Philipp Wesdin Biography

Johann Philipp Wesdin (Called Pauline of Saint Bartholomew; Hof, 1748-Rome, 1806) Austrian missionary.Carmelite, she learned oriental languages ​​in Rome.A missionary in Malabar, he is the author of the first Sanskrit grammar (1790) and revealed the affinities between this language and the Indo-European.
Post a Comment
Read more

Fray Mauro Tenda Biography

Fray Mauro Tenda (Nice, 17th century) Savoyard Capuchin.Arrived in Madrid in 1698, his friendship with Froilán Díaz-confessor of King Carlos II-allowed him to enter the court as an exorcist, convincing the king to be possessed.His intrigues in favor of the Austrians in the succession question earned him being arrested (1700) by the Inquisitor General Baltasar de Mendoza, and expelled from Spain.
Post a Comment
Read more

Ilias Venezis Biography

Ilias Venezis (Aivali, Asia Minor, 1904-Athens, 1973) Greek writer.The novel Matrícula 31328 (1931), which recounts his experience of deportation after the Greco-Turkish war (1920-1921), is his main work.He is also the author of novels ( Serenidad , 1939; Tierra eolia, 1943, and Los vancidos, 1954), of short stories ( The archipelago, 1969), from travel books ( Autumn in Italy, 1950, and Eftalón y viajes, 1973) and from the historical essay Los argonauts (1962).
Post a Comment
Read more