Javier Aguirre

Born in San Sebastián on June 13, 1935, Javier Aguirre Fernández founded and directed the San Sebastián cinema club in 1955. Between the years 1956-1957 he organized the III Cinematographic Training Week, the I film studies course and the National Festival of Amateur Film Art. He studied at the Official School of Cinematography, in Madrid, while writing film reviews for Film Ideal and Primer Plano. He began his journey as a director with experimental shorts such as Pasajes Tres , which won the Golden Shell for Best Short Film at the San Sebastián Festival in 1961. He explained his avant-garde conception of audiovisuals in “Anticine”, a book-manifesto published in 1971 by the editorial Fundamentals.

He continued in this line in the feature films Gente , Continuum and Vida/Perra . Throughout her career she carried out numerous innovative experiences, for example in 1972 she set up the street show “Pluralidades seis”, where several machines placed one next to the other projected various genre films. In 1997 he carried out the performance “Sin Film II” at the Spanish Film Library, in theory a projection of a film, but in reality it dispensed with the film, and in its place improvised forms are created in front of the light of the projector. The musicians Javier Maderuelo and Jesús Villa Rojo invented the soundtrack live. 

But Javier Aguirre also lavished himself in commercial cinema, with very popular comedies, such as Once a year, being a hippy doesn’t hurt , Single and mother in life or The astronaut . He combined terror with romanticism in Count Dracula’s Great Love , starring Paul Naschy , with whom he reprized in The Hunchback of the Morgue . He was also the creator of films for the popular comedy group Tuesday and 13, which he directed in Ni te cases ni te embarques and En busca del huevo perdido , and the children’s group Parchís, which he directed in La guerra de los niños andParchís goes into action .