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Teo Escamilla

Teo Escamilla

Camera

Biography

Teodoro Escamilla Serrano; Seville, 1940 - Matanzas, Cuba, 1997 Spanish cinematographer. In contrast to directors of photography who were concerned above all with creating their own style, Teo Escamilla was always in favor of a patient craftsmanship in cinematographic lighting that allowed him to adapt it, scene by scene, to the director's vision and to the specific story. He began his professional career as a photojournalist for publications such as Cine en 7 días, El Caso, the Madrid newspaper and the magazine Sábado Gráfico, and later as a television operator. In 1964 he became assistant cameraman on Llegar a más (1964, Jesús Fernández Santos) and the regular second operator for Luis Cuadrado, his mentor and teacher, whom he succeeded after his retirement due to illness in 1976 as director of photography on the films produced by Elías Querejeta. He debuted as first operator in Las violentas (1974, Fernando Miranda), to later take over from Juan Antonio Ruiz Anchía in El desencanto (1976, Jaime Chávarri), and from then on developed an intense work that would make him one of the most outstanding operators in Spanish cinema. He frequently worked on films by filmmakers such as Carlos Saura, Jaime Chávarri, Jaime de Armiñán (with whom in 1979 he founded the production company A punto, later Serva Films), Víctor Erice, José Luis Borau and Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, among others. For Carlos Saura's El amor brujo (1986), he received the Goya award for best cinematography. After directing two short films, Quiero ser mayor (1976) and an episode of the collective film Cuentos para una escapada (1979), in 1983 he debuted as a feature film director with Tú solo, a story set in the world of bullfighting, which received the Special Mention for best new director at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, although his career as first director did not continue.

Known For

Cria!
7.5

Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.

Cria!

1976
El Dorado
6.3

The story of an expedition down the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in 1560 by Spanish soldiers searching for the fabled city of gold, El Dorado.

El Dorado

1988
Horror Express
6.3

Mysterious and unearthly deaths start to occur while Professor Saxton is transporting the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature he found in Manchuria back to Europe.

Horror Express

1972
The Nest
6.5

In a town near Salamanca, an eccentric widower, aged 60, is captivated by an imp, a precocious 13 year old. Alejandro is wealthy and alone, passing time with music, chess, and his shotgun. Gregoria (Goyita) the daughter of a weak-willed policeman and his bullying wife, is a budding naturalist who conspires to meet Alejandro. Even though he knows the village is talking, Alejandro spends time with Goyita, on walks, horseback rides, and dinners. He's enchanted and tells his friend the village priest that he's living for the first time. Goyita makes new demands on Alejandro, and he must decide how to be true to his ethics and to this Platonic yet highly-charged relationship.

The Nest

1980
The Spirit of the Beehive
7.6

In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.

The Spirit of the Beehive

1973
Ferocious
5.7

After Pablo runs away from being shackled in a cabin, he spends the winter in a cave and emerges as a bear. With the help of a writer, Pablo tries to renter human society.

Ferocious

1984
Beyond the Walls
5.2

This 1985 Spanish film reveals one of the many terrible aspects of 16th century Spain, still plagued by the radical Christian Inquisition, one of a plethora of difficulties Spaniards faced at the time. Spanish super star Carmen Maura plays a nun who agrees to a selfless scam, a fake stigmata, only to avoid separation from her lover, another nun. It's a serious and passionate work, highlighting the theme of outspoken women-against-repression, seen in other good gay and lesbian films. This is not a lesbian "Nun sense" or another "Dark Habits" (by Almodovar, which also starred Carmen Maura, and also set in a Spanish convent, with some lesbian nuns). Perhaps, best of all, 'Extramuros' is realistic and frank. It isn't shy about its characters' sexuality. Their sexuality, and the film as a whole are genuine.

Beyond the Walls

1985
Sweet Hours
5.5

Juan Sahagún, since childhood, feels passion for his mother. One day in the street he sees a woman identical to her. He follows her and finds out that she works as an actress in a theater company, so Juan decides to hire the whole company to represent the people who have influenced him in his past. They recreate the same situations of yesteryear and Juan acts as the child he was, to relive the memories already forgotten.

Sweet Hours

1982
Los flamencos
7.0

Diego, retired from flamenco due to an illness, is obsessed with the memory of Antonia Jiménez, a beautiful woman he loved in the past and with whom he formed an artistic duet. Now, after having triumphed on the stages of half the world, she returns from America, while he is dedicated to survive in the suburbs of Madrid mixed up in shady business. He kills the man who stole his woman. A tragedy could be sensed in the air.

Los flamencos

1968
Stico
6.2

Leopoldo Contreras, a professor emeritus of Roman law has serious economic problems. His translations of classical authors do not give enough money to live and had to sell even their floor. To remedy the situation is offered as a slave to a former student in exchange for room and board.

Stico

1985
Muere una mujer
6.5

A salesman discovers that his wife has died under strange circumstances. Examining these circumstances, it becomes obvious to him that they were mainly caused by himself.

Muere una mujer

1964
You Alone
6.3

In their spare time, after their studies or their work, children and adolescents between the ages of eight and sixteen meet at the School of Bullfighting in Madrid to learn the Art of Cúchares: Torear. In their stomachs there is no hunger as in the past, their dreams do not lie in having a farmhouse and being famous. Their only dreams are to be in front of a bull, animal with which death goes, fact of which they are fully aware, as their teachers continually remind them. These, retired bullfighters, some by age, others by force and all with their bodies full of scars produced by the horns of a bull. The nude bullfighting scene is fascinating without being exploitive, and it serves as an analogy for the vulnerability these young bullfighters have when in the ring with the bulls.

You Alone

1984
Carmen
6.6

While rehearsing a flamenco ballet adaptation of Bizet's opera “Carmen”, Antonio, the choreographer, falls in love with the main dancer, Carmen, a fiercely independent woman. Antonio is slowly consumed by jealousy and possessiveness towards Carmen, just like Don José in the original opera, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.

Carmen

1983
The Stilts
6.9

After the death of his wife, Angel, a university professor and writer, he falls into a severe depression. He flees to his house in the country, but there the evil is accentuated, which leads him to an attempted suicide that Teresa, his young neighbor, saves him. Angel starts a relationship with her and her partner, Alberto. Soon he falls in love with Teresa and, through a passionate relationship, he frees himself from his torments. Teresa, Alberto and her theater group on stilts ask her to write a play to represent her in the town. Obsessed by Teresa, she is vivified with this experience with the young, but she soon moves away from him carnally. This rupture desperate and as Teresa disabuses him of any possibility of continuity, in the mind of Angel reappears suicide as the only solution

The Stilts

1984
Faster, Faster
6.4

Angela is a young waitress who turns her back on society when she meets and falls in love with Pablo, a reckless criminal delinquent. Along with Pablo’s gang of car thieves, the pair embark on a drug and disco-fueled robbery spree as they hurtle toward oblivion.

Faster, Faster

1981
On the Line
4.8

A Border Patrol agent is determined to catch his old nemesis, an American criminal who successfully smuggles illegal aliens across the border from Mexico.

On the Line

1984
My Dearest Senorita
6.7

A woman living in a small town discovers after fifty years that she is actually a man. Will she change her sex and suffer the reaction of a narrow-minded society?

My Dearest Senorita

1972
Cut-Throats Nine
6.5

A group of ruthless convicts is led to prison through an inhospitable mountain range by a small cavalry detachment commanded by Sergeant Brown, who is accompanied by his young and beautiful daughter.

Cut-Throats Nine

1971
Antonieta
5.4

Anna is a psychologist undertaking research about famous suicidal women. She takes a specific interest in the case of Antonieta Rivas Mercado, who killed herself in 1931 in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Antonieta

1982
Blood Wedding
6.6

A dance troupe prepares for and completes a dress rehearsal of Federico García Lorca's tragic play "Blood Wedding," which is about a bride who runs away from her wedding with a former boyfriend.

Blood Wedding

1981