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Tributes and Retrospectives - Mike Dibb

Crew:

Production: BBC Arena

The Spirit of Lorca

A film by Mike Dibb

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Centred on the life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca, the most emblematic Spanish poet and playwright of the 20th century, Mike Dibb’s film is a tribute to Lorca’s legacy, premiered on the 50th anniversary of the writer's death. Without any previously written screenplay, but following the guidelines of biographer and expert Ian Gibson, the documentary uses quotes by the poet himself, following the development of his career as a writer, from his early days in Granada to the students’ residence in Madrid, where he met Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. Several testimonies are also gathered from other personalities who came into direct contact with the poet, such as Luis Rosales and Rafael Alberti, and his North American friend Philip Cummings, along with other figures for whom Lorca's work was decisive: the Cuban poet Miguel Barnet and actress Núria Espert.
  • Cast:

    Ian Gibson, Luis Rosales, Rafael Alberti, Philip Cummings, Miguel Barnet, Nuria Espert
  • Original Title:

    The Spirit of Lorca
  • Country:

    United Kingdom
  • Year:

    1986
  • 75' Original Version EN

Crew:

Production: BBC Arena

Director

Mike Dibb

Mike Dibb is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, most of which made for television, covering film, art, literature, music, science, sport and popular culture. After completing a degree at Trinity College, Dublin, he was hired in 1963 by BBC TV. He worked as an editor in the Film department until 1967, when he moved to the Music and Arts department, where he remained until 1981. During this period he directed several films, including multiple collaborations with writer John Berger (who in 2015 was a guest at LEFFEST ), the most well-known of which is the four-part series Ways of Seeing, awarded the BAFTA for Best Specialty Series and which later became a book translated and published worldwide, one of the most important for several generations of artists and students of art. Dibb has also made some films about writers, such as Octavio Paz, Lorca, A-S. Byatt or Elmore Leonard. In 1981, he joined Third Eyes Productions, where he continued to direct and produce, primarily for Channel Four. In 1986, he created his own production company, Dibb Directions Ltd. He collaborated with the BBC once again, making films and series such as Made In Latin America, about Latin American culture. In 1994, he co-directed with Stephen Frears the documentary Typically British, about the history of British cinema. His film The Miles Davis Story won the Royal Philharmonic Society Television Award and an Emmy for Best Art Documentary of the Year (2001). He also made a film about Keith Jarrett and another about the composer and bandoneon player Astor Piazolla.
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