The veteran Catalan film director Rosa Vergés (Barcelona, 1955) has been awarded the 2024 Gaudí Honor-Miquel Porter Prize awarded by the Catalan Film Academy and which will be awarded to her at the gala that will take place on February 4 in the Barcelona International Convention Center.
The institution chaired by Judith Colell recognizes Vergés "for being a pioneering director when there were no female directors, opening the way for female filmmakers who in subsequent decades have amazed with their stories and have positioned Catalan cinema inside and outside our borders." They have also highlighted "her tireless cinematographic activism, vindicating the legacy of outstanding filmmakers that the passage of time has been erasing, accompanying promising young people, organizing awards ceremonies or insistently defending the profession and the presence of women in cinema from different institutional speakers".
Vergés, a film and television director and scriptwriter, and honorary member of the Catalan Film Academy since 2021, is the first woman filmmaker to receive the highest recognition of the profession, which until now had distinguished the careers of six filmmakers: Jaime Camino (2009), Josep Maria Forn (2010), Jordi Dauder (2011), Pere Portabella (2012), Ventura Pons (2015) and Francesc Betriu (2020).
Daughter of the publisher Josep Vergés, founder of Destino, Rosa Vergés (Barcelona, 1955) was educated in a house with a large library, often frequented by writers such as Josep Pla, Miguel Delibes, Carmen Laforet or Carmen Martín Gaite.
When she finished her degree in Art History at the University of Barcelona in 1976, she decided to go to Paris to complete her training at the Sorbonne, and upon returning she became an actress in the Dagoll Dagom company, while writing scripts and collaborating with directors such as Vicente Aranda. (The Girl with the Golden Panties) or Bigas Luna (Lola, La Plaça del Diamant and Angustia). She worked for eight years as a scriptwriter, screenwriter, art director and assistant director with filmmakers such as J.A. Salgot, Francesc Betriu, Agustí Villaronga, Francisco Rovira Beleta and Francesc Bellmunt, with whom she co-wrote Un parell d'ous in 1985.
In the 90s, Rosa Vergés was part of the generation that would play an important role in Spanish cinema, along with names such as Álex de la Iglesia, José Luis Guerín, Julio Medem, Chus Gutiérrez, Ana Díez or Enrique Urbizu. Her debut as a director and screenwriter would come with Boom Boom (1990), a comedy set in the Barcelona of the Olympic effervescence that won the Goya for best novel direction, the National Award of Catalonia, the Sant Jordi Award for Cinematography and the Fotogramas de silver His filmography is completed with works like Souvenir (1994); the children's film Tic Tac (1997); Iris (2004), selected at the Malaga Festival; Miss Júlia, con Anna Lizaran; and the collective work on Maria Mercè Marçal Ferida Arrel (2012). As a documentary filmmaker, he has directed The Pavilion of the Republic, National Award of Catalonia; Barcelona, Negatif et Positif, for Canal Plus France; Alberti, a poet in the street; the multidisciplinary and collective piece García Lorca: From Granada to the Moon or L'Eixample Cerdà, islands in a network. And in the artistic direction of theatrical and musical productions, he highlights the ceremonies of the Olympic Torch bequeathing in Barcelona in 1992 or The dream of water for the Catalan Pavilion at the Zaragoza Exhibition in 2008.
