Filmmaker Carlos Saura dies in Spain, aged 91

Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura died on Friday at the age of 91. He led the awakening of art cinema in Spain after decades of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and captivated international audiences with dramatic flamenco choreographies.

The Spanish Academy of Cinema reported that Saura was “one of the key figures in the history of cinema in Spain”. He died at home, according to the academy, in the company of his family members.

Admired by American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, from “2001 – Uuma Odyssey in Space”, Saura was known for his criticism of bourgeois culture, for the use of flashbacks and the surrealism of Luis Buñuel, a close personal friend.

One of his most popular films, 1983’s “Carmen”, a drama about a dance troupe based on Georges Bizet’s opera of the same name, became a worldwide success. “”Carmen” has won awards, including at the Cannes Film Festival.

Along with “El Amor Brujo” (Bewitched Love) from 1986, the films make up Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy, filmed as theatrical productions, or even rehearsals, with minimal scenography.

Born in the northeastern city of Huesca in 1932, Saura was raised in Murcia, in the arid south. His brother Antonio became one of Spain’s leading modern painters.

Saura abandoned industrial engineering studies in 1949 to become a photographer, and later studied journalism and cinema. He was a cinema teacher and worked on several short films before making his first feature film, “Os Delinquentes”, in 1960.

Influenced by the Italian neorealists, he never lost that initial concern with social issues and condemned Francoist censorship, but he never considered himself a political artist.

Saura had seven children.