Spanish filmmakers already have a new boss. Fernando Méndez-Leite has been elected president of the Film Academy in an election held this morning in which four candidates concurred. Méndez-Leite will replace Mariano Barroso and has already had a few challenges on the table from day one: the new Audiovisual Law, the platforms or the celebration of the Goya awards.
Méndez-Leite knows the Administration well, as he was General Director of Cinematography and has been in charge of the Escuela de Cinematografía and the Audiovisual School of Madrid, and this knowledge may be his main weapon to face these challenges. He is also a great lover of cinema. His romance with the seventh art began in childhood at the hands of his father who took him to the movies from a very young age.
And he continued at the Film School where he studied scriptwriting and directing from 1966 to 1970, when he was expelled along with other classmates for going on strike against the entity's director. Méndez-Leite confesses to being an admirer of Bergman, Vidor, Murnau, Dreyer, Bresson, Mamoulian, Stemberg, Ray...
But above all it is a great knowledge of Spanish cinema. After school, he went to TVE where he worked on programs such as Galería (1973-1974), Cultura 2 (1975) or Imagens (1978-1981). Until in 1983 a treasure fell into his hands: some films from the 50s with which the public network did not know what to do. Méndez-Leite found a place for them: La noche del cine español, a program that he directed between 1983 and 1985 and that he structured as "a kind of time tunnel", as he recounted in an interview with Revista de cine.
The night of Spanish cinema became "a history of Francoism through cinema" and included, in addition to the films, NODO and interviews with the most varied characters such as Manuel Fraga, Santiago Carrillo, Alfredo Di Stéfano, Paco Gento, Ferenc Puskás or the abbot of the Valley of the Fallen. Méndez-Leite loved the project but he left it when the Government of Felipe González offered him the General Directorate of Cinematography, a position he held between 1986 and 1988.
Before joining the Ministry, he had shot his only feature film El hombre de moda (1980) with Xabier Elorriaga, Marilina Ross, Isabel Mestres and Carmen Maura. Later she tried to promote a second film, Woman in the Moon, but had to abandon the project due to lack of financing. In 2006 he directed a documentary, The Producer, about Elías Querejeta, which was released on DVD.
He returned to TVE where he directed La Regenta, a three-episode series based on the novel by Leopoldo Alas Clarín with Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Carmelo Gómez and Juan Luis Galiardo as the protagonist in which Méndez-Leite's wife, the well-known actress, also worked. Fiorella Faltoiano.
The new president of the Film Academy has also been a critic in publications such as Fotogramas and Diario 16 and professor of Film Theory and Contemporary Film History at the University of Valladolid. In addition, he directed the Madrid School of Cinematography and Audiovisual from its foundation in 1994 until 2011.
All this experience is what Méndez-Leite now brings to Spanish filmmakers who have to deal with the new Audiovisual Law, which has bothered independent producers and could be appealed. In addition, the new board of the entity, which will have Rafael Portela and Susi Sánchez as vice presidents, faces the challenges of returning to theaters, production for platforms and the organization of the next Goya gala, which will be held In sevilla.
