
Rafael Azcona
Writing
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Rafael Azcona Fernández (24 October 1926 – 24 March 2008) was an awarded Spanish screenwriter and novelist who has worked with some of the best Spanish and international filmmakers. Azcona won five Goya Awards during his career, including a lifetime achievement award in 1998. He was born in the northern Spanish city Logroño on 24 October 1926. Azcona initially began his career writing for humor magazines. He became known as a screenwriter when he penned the screenplay for the film, El Pisito (The Little Apartment), which was based on his own novel. The 1959 film was directed by Italian film director, Marco Ferreri. Azcona teamed up with director Fernando Trueba in “Belle Époque,” which won an Academy Award for best foreign film in 1994. He collaborated with other Spanish directors including Luis Garcia Berlanga, Jose Luis Cuerda, Jose Luis Garcia Sanchez, Pedro Olea, and Carlos Saura. Azcona was also awarded the Spanish Fine Arts Gold Medal in 1994. Rafael Azcona died at his home in Madrid, Spain, on 24 March 2008, at the age of 81.
Known For

In 1987 Madrid, the unexpected encounter between a seasoned journalist and a young student leads to a profound exploration of love, desire, politics, power, and discovery of each other.
Madrid, 1987

A modest Neapolitan man meets a young woman with excessive hairiness. He exhibits her at fairs and marries her. It is after marriage that he receives a tempting offer from a French manager.
The Ape Woman

Psychological drama of the compelling relationship between a young French engineer and the girl he takes into his home after his wife has left him with their baby son.
The Last Woman

Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.
La Grande Bouffe

A new literature teacher, Ulises, comes to a small town near the sea and falls in love with a young woman, Martina. This woman is loved by a rich businessman named Alberto but chooses Ulises. Soon after their marriage and the birth of their son, Ulises vanishes while fishing at sea. In the meanwhile Martina marries Alberto, but all is not what it seems...
Sound of the Sea

In 1931, a young soldier deserts from the army and falls into a country farm, where he is welcomed by the owner due to his political ideas. Manolo has four daughters, Fernando likes all of them and they like him, so he has to decide which one to love.
Belle Époque

April, 1940. Manolo, 16 years old, and Jesus, who is just 8, are taken by their older brother Pepe, a lieutenant in the Army, to a sanatorium for children suffering from tuberculosis, situated on the border with Portugal. Once in the sanatorium, Manolo, surrounded by boys all much younger than he is, feels a bit like the cock of the walk since the only other man around is the handyman Emilio who looks after the gardens and does whatever needs to be done about the place. His wife, Rafaela, is the cook. Manolo meets Irene, a falangist who runs the sanatorium, and the school teacher, Miss Transito, a crabby spinster. He has his first sexual experience, albeit as a voyeur, with his nurse Vicenta. When she has to leave, her place is taken by a girl from the village, Maria Jesus, with whom Manolo falls hopelessly in love. A relationship grows up between them which will mark them both for ever.
Year of Enlightment

Remake of the tale of an acclaimed matador who finds himself involved with a beautiful woman, jeopardizing both his marriage and career.
Blood and Sand

After her experiences in Nazi Germany, actress Macarena Granada traveled to Hollywood, where she became a star. In the 1950s, the diva returns to Francoist Spain to star a Hollywood blockbuster about Queen Isabella I of Castile. (A sequel to The Girl of Your Dreams, 1998.)
The Queen of Spain

Chechu is a 13 year old boy who lives surrounded by peculiar people: his grandfather, his uncle, and two maids. He falls in love with one of them.
Chechu y familia

A dishonored Union Army officer leads a group of convicts to retake Fort Holman from the Confederate Army.
A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die

In the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, a young man comes of age sexually, through a string of relationships with a wide range of mature, older women.
In Praise of Older Women

An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.
The Executioner

The painter Francisco de Goya is witness to the disasters and horrors caused by the bloody resistance of the Spanish people to the French occupation during the Napoleonic wars.
Los desastres de la guerra

The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.
Butterfly

The young nobleman Calisto falls in love with Melibea, the daughter of a rich merchant. Calisto's servant Sempronio suggests they get the sorceress Celestina to further the romance. However Calisto's other servant Parmeno is suspicious of Celestina, as he knows about her tricks.
La Celestina

The young but traveled Ana arrives in a manor in the countryside of Spain to work as nanny of three girls and finds a dysfunctional family.
Anna and the Wolves

When a good-natured factory supervisor living in Milan with his Northern wife returns to his native Sicily, a decades' old oath forces him to fulfill a nightmarish obligation.
Mafioso

A forty-year-old employee marries a seemingly quiet girl who turns into a mantis after the wedding.
The Conjugal Bed

An outspoken boy and a gunfighter-pimp save a drifter's life from hanging. The boy's uncle dies, leaving a house and some dry, useless land to the boy. The dying uncle has obtained the drifter's promise to help the boy get what is his. Meanwhile the gunfighter has decided that the drifter should marry his daughter after being with her previously. The two get into a series of brawls and shoot-outs until they arrive in the town and find the boy's inheritance -which turns out not to be as useless as it first appears.