UB Film Festival Will Pay Homage to Spanish Director

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- During the weekend of Nov. 7-8, the University at Buffalo Department of Modern Languages and Literatures will present a film festival -- Ciclo de Cine -- on the work of the great Spanish film director Luis García Berlanga.

The festival will feature screenings, talks and discussions that will explore Berlanga's influence on film in Spain over a period of five centuries.

All films will be in Spanish only.

The festival will take place in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. It will be free of charge and open to the public. Co-sponsors are the College of Arts and Sciences, Sigma Delta Pi and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. See attached program.

The festival will open on Nov. 7 with two award-winning black-and-white films that are considered to be two of the finest ever produced in Spain: "Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall/Welcome, Mr. Marshall" (1952) and "El verdugo/The Executioner" (1962). A roundtable discussion in English will follow the first film.

On Nov. 8, two color films -- "La vaquilla" (1985) and "La escopeta nacional" (1977)-- will be presented. After the first screening, film scholar Jaume Marti-Olivella of Allegheny College will present a lecture in Spanish on the iconography of national ritual as represented in "La Vaquilla."