Archives
125 Years of Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca was born in 1898, and earlier this year marked the 125th anniversary of his birth. When he was 30 years old, Spanish newspapers covered a sensational story from a remote corner of Andalucia. Twenty six year old bride Francisca Cañadas Morales was due to marry a local farmer. hours before the wedding she eloped with her cousin Francisco Montes Cañadas, with whom she had been in love since childhood. But before they could get away, the groom’s brother shot and killed Francisco. The episode became famous throughout the country as ‘el crimen de Níjar’ and served as […]
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Anthropology of the Moving Image
A new book looks at movie landscapes: Arnd Schneider, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo has published widely on contemporary art and anthropology. His latest book, Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image, brings together a set of essays on anthropology, ethnography and film. One of the essays, titled “An Anthropology of Abandon,” discusses experimental filmmaker and photographer Cyrill Lachauer’s “narrative landscapes” and travels through the American West. The essay opens with the desert, a tabula rasa on which the imagination can be projected. According to philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the desert is fascinating because of […]
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The Story of El Condor 1
I put together this short video about one of my favorite film sets in Almería, which appears in “Once Upon a Time in Almeria: The Legacy of Hollywood in Spain” (Daylight Books 2017). One of the most intriguing locations in Almería is the site of an elaborate fortress originally constructed in 1969 for the film El Condor. Adobe houses, horse stables, an elevated water tank, and a luxurious two story stone house surrounded a central plaza the size of a soccer field. The entire complex was circled by 30 foot walls with a network of watchtowers and stairways. The fort […]
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WW84 in Spain
In Wonder Woman 1984, Diana Prince appears to be in semi-retirement, working at the Smithsonian Institution as an expert in ancient civilizations while playing mall cop in her spare time. But she is soon faced with a new challenge when an ancient Dreamstone shows up, granting wishes while creating havoc. This is where the real action starts. Diana and reanimated dead boyfriend Steve Trevor fly to Cairo, chasing after Max Lord, who has fled with the Dreamstone to fulfill his quest for limitless power. The Egypt segment was entirely filmed in Spain, in Almería, on the southern coast, and the […]
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El Astronauta
This 1970 Spanish comedy follows Pepe (Tony LeBlanc), a small town dreamer who, after watching the US moon landing on television, decides to build his own rocket to the moon. Amazingly, after numerous setbacks, he finally blasts off into space before coming to a rough landing in a desolate lunar landscape. But while he believes he has reached the moon, his capsule has actually fallen back to earth, landing in the Tabernas desert in the south of Spain. Suddenly, an American cavalry rides by on horseback. The director yells ‘cut!’, while Pepe stands bewildered in his space suit in the […]
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Then and Now: The Attack on Aqaba
Compare the beach at Algarrobico on the southern coast of Spain then and now in the video clip above. The city of Aqaba was reconstructed here in 1962 for the filming of this classic scene from Lawrence of Arabia. Though nothing remains of the set today, just the hulk of an abandoned hotel project. I previously wrote about the history of this spot on this blog here.
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Nelson Algren and Simone De Beauvoir’s Road Trip Through Franco’s Spain
Only a handful of photographs exist of Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren together from a love affair that persisted, mostly across the Atlantic ocean, for over a decade. Possibly the last photograph of them together is from a visit to Spain in May 1960. In the photograph, they stand with Catalan writer Juan Goytisolo to their right along the wall of the Alcazaba, an old Moorish palace, in Almería. A glimpse of the mountainous landscape beyond can be seen over Goytisolo’s shoulder. Beauvoir, in the middle, looks intently into the camera with the air of a school teacher, while […]
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Is this Hollywood?
“You can sit here and look around the back and think you were in Los Angeles. Except it hasn’t got that word ‘Hollywood’ scorched across it.” from an interview with the late Eddie Fowlie, David Lean’s “Dedicated Maniac” Once Upon a Time in Almería: The Legacy of Hollywood in Spain’ (Daylight Books 2017)
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The Attack on Aqaba 1
“In May 1962, an isolated beach on the barren southeastern coast of Spain suddenly bustled with activity. Hundreds of local farm hands had been hired to construct a replica of the Red Sea port of Aqaba, circa 1917. It took them three months to build over 300 false front buildings. They planted palm trees, placed four full-size cannons on the hills above, and shipped 450 horses and 150 camels over from Morocco. Soon after, Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia would lead an army down from the hills to overtake the mock town.” From the essay accompanying the photographs. This […]
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La Calahorra
For the town of Flagstone in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), production designer Carlo Simi constructed a western street set at the La Calahorra train station near Guadix. Little remains today but the brick structures of the Phoenix Bank and the Hotel, which have been partially absorbed into an adjacent chicken farm. Once Upon a Time in Almería: The Legacy of Hollywood in Spain’ (Daylight Books 2017)
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