Celebrity Biographies
Florentino Soria
Florentino Soria directed the Spanish Film Library for fifteen years, worked as a professor of Film History at the Faculty of Information Sciences of the Complutense University and worked as a screenwriter on outstanding films by directors such as Luis García Berlanga and Fernando Fernán Gómez. He passed away at the age of 98 on June 2, 2015.
Born in June 1917 in Gijón, Florentino Soria graduated in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Oviedo. Later he moved to Madrid, where he graduated in Journalism and Directing from the Institute of Cinematographic Research and Experiences (IIEC).
In this last institution he became assistant director, and taught script, as well as in its successor, the Official School of Cinematography. He began as a screenwriter with Cerco de ira, a film by Carlos Serrano de Osma that was never finished.
Later he wrote scripts for Luis García Berlanga ( Calabuch ), Fernando Fernán-Gómez ( La vida alrededor ), Pedro Lazaga ( El otro árbol de Guernica ) and José María Forqué ( La cera virgen ). In 1961 he won the National Showtime Syndicate award as a screenwriter for El rey Baltasar , also known as El hombre del Expreso Oriente , by F. Borja Moro.
He came to work as an actor, in small roles in the films La escopeta nacional, Nacional III and Moros y cristianos , by García Berlanga, and in films by other directors such as Álex de la Iglesia ( Muertos de risa ) and Icíar Bollaín ( Mataharis ). In July 1962 he was appointed deputy director of the Directorate General of Cinematography, when the head of the film was José María García Escudero. He served as director of the National Film Library from November 17, 1970 to March 23, 1984, the time of the Transition. In addition to teaching Film History at the Complutense University’s Faculty of Information Sciences, he also published monographic books onJosé María Forqué and Juan Mariné .