Filmmaker Jaime de Armiñán, director of ‘Mi Querida Señorita’, dies at 97 | Culture

Spanish cinema bids farewell to one of the great names to whom it owes much of its history. The filmmaker Jaime de Armiñán (Madrid, 1927), director and screenwriter of films such as My Dear Miss (1972) and The nest (1980), both Oscar candidates in the category of best foreign-language film, or the TVE series Reedbed, has died at the age of 97, the General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) of which he was a part reported this Wednesday. “A filmmaker never retires (…). Those like me cannot retire because we only do so when we go to the sad grave,” he recalled when collecting the honorary Goya.

The entity of which he was a part wanted to say goodbye to the filmmaker with a warm message in honor of #SGAE. An immense filmmaker and firm defender of the copyright of creators, he joined the entity on September 16, 1954. The burning chapel will open this Thursday, from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., in the Manuel de Falla Room of the SGAE itself, the association has informed Efe.

Armiñán was also a novelist and playwright. Writing was his passion since he was young. At the age of 20 he published his first book, circus biographyand his film career took off as a screenwriter for other directors such as José María Forqué, for whom he wrote The heifer (1962) and I have seen death (1965). His work as a screenwriter in The lame pigeon (1996) earned him, in fact, his only Goya nomination, although he also received the honorary award for his career in 2014 from the then president of the Academy, Enrique González Macho. “I would like to go around the ring, with a song of Reedbed playing in the background, sung by Vainica Doble,” he said when he picked it up, referring to the pop musical duo of the seventies of which his wife, Elena Santoja, a popular presenter of Caught red handed died in 2016 and for whom it was black in its beginnings on TVE.

After a decade dedicated to directing television, a medium from which he never separated thanks to series like Three were three (1972) and also programs like Between uspresented by Santoja, his debut as a film director did not come until 1969 with Carola by day, Carola by night, starring Pepa Flores and Pepe Isbert. Although at one point he was reluctant to sign, his film work continued until 2008 with 14, Fabian Roadwith Ana Torrent and Ángela Molina, although in his last years it was not as wordy.

The films of Armiñán, awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 1985, dealt with themes ahead of their time, almost always approached with a lot of black humor: transsexuality, homosexuality, impossible loves, erotic awakenings at 13 years old… . My dear lady, in particular, co-written with José Luis Borau, is today an incomparable classic that continues to be transgressive. José Luis López Vázquez played Adela Castro, a single woman from the provinces who had always known that she was not a normal woman, but who believed that she had remained single because she was unattractive. Her life changes when a doctor tells her that she is a man, and she moves to Madrid with a new identity. La Alana S. Portero, writer of Bad habit, has highlighted in X: “Very ahead of everything and, in addition to being a director, a wonderful scriptwriter. “We have learned a lot from Jaime de Armiñán.” The Javis will produce a new version of the film for Netflix.

His extensive work also includes The love of Captain Brandowith which he won the Berlinale in 1974, and Yo, dad (1975), both starring Ana Belén, and Stico (1985), with Fernando Fernán Gómez as a voluntary slave. Although the ones that stood out as his favorites were Stories of frivolity (1967), written with director Chico Ibáñez Serrador and with which they won the Monteaux Grand Prix in 1968, and the series A national glory (1999), based on her grandmother.