Had Bernardo Bertolucci a special relationship of love with the Festival of San Sebastian. Went to him many times. The first, in 1976, to support the young Spanish democracy, along with other filmmakers europeans, with their dazzling movie Novecento.
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I was Already an author admired after having seen The conformist, The last tango in Paris or The strategy of the spider. But then, in the Mostra of Venice, he put in evidence the ill that we took the critical italians out of their country kicked with fury, his beautiful and complex film The moon, even before the end of the projection of the press, a situation that I took the opportunity to leave the criticism of life (yes, even if it only was for the first time). Then met to Bertolucci especially thanks to his faithful friend Chema Prado [who was director of the Filmoteca ESpañola]. He had an intelligence far-sighted and a great good humor. It was easy to encandilarse with him and more when cherished our festival as something of their own, bringing to him some of their movies as a gift, as the then-unpublished first hour of The last emperor, or the world premiere of Besieged in 1998, his last masterpiece, among other films. He never wanted to be jury and is not to forgive at all because it was from other festivals. Not sobtante, we can not forget the many kindnesses he had with the our.
When in the opening ceremony of 1996 he was willing to appear on the stage to present his film stolen Beauty, a group of protesters advanced on the scene to express their support to the basque political prisoners. Once calm the waters, finally came the turn of Bertolucci who calmly addressed the audience, praising the festival. “This San Sebastian breathes cinema on all four sides because we just see something similar at the start of Senso, the film of Luchino Visconti in which some of the protesters interrupt the representation of the opera house by throwing leaflets from the upper floors”, and he then said that he would see many movies that would be like the peppers of Padrón, some are hot and others are not. And thus resolved the tension.
Being sick, kept trying to shoot a new film, even though the forces no longer accompanied him. I don’t know when he left the project; we were chasing a lot of stories and always, I guess, through your style challenging, creative images with which he has composed a mosaic of our time and love for the cinema. “There is No love, there are only proofs of love”, he repeated emulating Jean Cocteau in several of his films. And so he proved.
