The Klasikoak section, which was unable to go ahead last year because of the pandemic, returns with six titles – three more than in 2019 – directed by Luis García Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem, Fernando Fernán-Gómez and Luis María Delgado, Francis Ford Coppola and Bertrand Tavernier. The three Spanish classics, programmed to celebrate the centenaries of García Berlanga and Fernán-Goméz, have been digitalized and restored by the Filmoteca Española.

On the year of the centenary of Luis García Berlanga’s birth, Klasikoak will recover his debut as a moviemaker Esa pareja feliz (That Happy Couple,1951), written and co-directed with Juan Antonio Bardem. Fernando Fernán-Gómez and Elvira Quintillá star in the tale of a modest couple from Madrid whose dreams of the good life seem to come true when they win a competition sponsored by a brand of soap.

The Berlanga session will kick off with a screening of his short film La muerte y el leñador (Death and the Woodcutter, 1962), third fragment of the anthology film Las cuatro verdades, based on the fables of La Fontaine. The Valencian moviemaker, who considered this episode to be one of the most nonsensical in his filmography, once again worked with his inseparable Rafael Azcona to pen the story of an organ grinder whose handle is confiscated for not having the right documents.

Klasikoak will screen another first work, Manicomio (1953), the adaptation of four stories by Poe, Kuprin, Andreiev and Gómez de la Serna co-directed by Fernando Fernán-Gómez with Luis Miguel Delgado. Fernán-Gómez, whose hundredth birthday also falls in 2021, stars in this satire set in a psychiatric hospital alongside other important actors including Elvira Quintillá, Susana Canales, Julio Peña and María Asquerino.

Two films remembered from the early days of Francis Ford Coppola’s career will also screen in versions restored by the American Zoetrope studios. On the one hand, the section will show The Rain People (1969), with which the Italian-American filmmaker landed the Golden Shell at San Sebastian Festival, opening new paths for a genre as North American as the road movie. Starring Shirley Knight, James Caan and Robert Duvall, this was the first work written and directed single-handed by its director.

The other film by Coppola, recipient of the Special 50th Anniversary Donostia Award in 2002, is The Outsiders: The Complete Novel, an extended version of The Outsiders (1983), the adaptation of Susan E. Hinton’s iconic teen novel. In 2005, the director reintegrated 22 minutes of footage including a new opening and new ending more faithful to the book, while enriching the characters played in their day by C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise, among other budding stars. In addition, the new edition of the film narrating the class struggle between two groups of adolescents from Oklahoma during the 60s contains a rousing new rock & roll soundtrack with six songs by Elvis Presley and other music greats.

The San Sebastian Festival will make the most of Klasikoak to pay tribute to one of its best loved filmmakers, Bertrand Tavernier, screening his Ça commence aujourd'hui (It All Starts Today, 1999), a moving look at the world of education which participated in Perlak and won the Audience Award in San Sebastian. The showing will be introduced by Thierry Fremaux, director of the Festival de Cannes and of the Festival Lumière in Lyon, as well as the filmmaker’s executor. Tavernier, who died in March of this year, competed three times in the Festival’s Official Selection: with Coup de torchon (Clean Slate, 1982); with Capitaine Conan (Captain Conan, 1966), which landed a Special Jury Mention, and with Quai D’Orsay (2013), which garnered the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay and the FIPRESCI Prize. As well as playing the lead part in his own retrospective in 1999, the year he chaired the Official Jury, the French maestro participated in Perlak with Laissez-Passer (2002) and Holy Lola (2005), which once again won him the Audience Award. His last participation in the Festival was with Voyage à travers le cinéma français / A Journey Through French Cinema (2016), opening film of the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section.

‘FLOWERS IN HELL’

On the other hand, the Flowers in hell. The golden age of Korean cinema retrospective will come with three titles replacing others not finally included in the programme for technical reasons. In place of Ma-ui gyedan / The Devil’s Stairway (1964), Gwiro / Homebound (1967) and Hyu-il / A Day Off (1968), all three directed by Lee Man-Hee, the season will include the screening of three dramas set against a social backdrop: Lomaenseuppappa / Romantic Papa (Shin Sang-ok, 1960), Mabu / A Coachman (Kang Dae-jin, 1961) and Yeopansa / A Woman Judge (Hong Eun-won, 1962), one of the first films in the history of Korean cinema to be directed by a woman.

The Flowers in hell programme will however maintain some of the period’s most emblematic movies: Hanyeo / The Housemaid (1960), considered to be one of the masterpieces in the history of South Korean cinema; harsh and realist chronicles of life in post-war South Korea, such as Ji-okhwa / The Flower in Hell (1958) and Obaltan / Aimless Bullet (1961); and drama classics like Angae / Mist (1967). Film noir too will have an outstanding place with Geom-eun meori / Black Hair (1964) while teen movies will be represented by Maenbal-ui cheongchun / The Barefooted Young (1964), and Dumangang-a jal itgeora / Farewell Duman River (1962), an example of Manchu western, a typically local genre featuring adventures set in Manchuria and taking their inspiration from the American western.

The San Sebastian Festival and the Filmoteca Española organise this retrospective of ten titles from the 50s and 60s in collaboration with the Filmoteca Vasca and the Korean Cultural Centre in Spain. The season, which had to be cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, will be completed with a monographic book published by the Festival and the Filmoteca Española.