Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa

Born: March 28, 1936
in Arequipa, Peru
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, is a Peruvian writer, journalist, essayist, college professor, and a former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." He also won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award, the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes International Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit.

Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.

Many of Vargas Llosa's works are influenced by the writer's perception of Peruvian society and his own experiences as a native Peruvian. Increasingly, he has expanded his range, and tackled themes that arise from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa has made many criticisms of nationalism in different parts of the world. Another change over the course of his career has been a shift from a style and approach associated with literary modernism, to a sometimes playful postmodernism.

Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and now identifies as a liberal. He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990 with the center-right Frente Democrático coalition, advocating classical liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori. He is the person who, in 1990, "coined the phrase that circled the globe," declaring on Mexican television, "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship", a statement which became an adage during the following decade.

Vargas Llosa is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

Movies for Mario Vargas Llosa...

La última lidia
Title: La última lidia
Character: Él mismo
Released: May 12, 2023
Type: Movie
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The Padilla Affair
Title: The Padilla Affair
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: September 2, 2022
Type: Movie
Havana, spring 1971: The poet Heberto Padilla has just been set free and appears before the Cuban Writers' Union where he pronounces a statement of "heartfelt self-criticism", declares himself to be a counterrevolutionary agent and throws accusations of complicity at many of his colleagues present at the event, among them, his wife. A month previously, his arrest under the accusation of endangering the security of the Cuban state had mobilised prominent intellectuals all over the world, who wrote a letter to Fidel Castro calling for the release of the poet, whose only sin had been to dissent through his poetic work. The writer's mea culpa, the recording of which is shown for the first time to the public, marks the narrative line of a story including the testimonies of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Edwards and Fidel Castro.
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Title: Milá Vs Milá
Character: Entrevistado
Released: October 13, 2021
Type: TV
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The Emma Bovary Trial
Title: The Emma Bovary Trial
Character: Self - Writer
Released: September 15, 2021
Type: Movie
On January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.
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Title: Hemingway
Character: Himself – Writer
Released: April 5, 2021
Type: TV
The visionary work and the turbulent life of Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest and most influential writers America has ever produced. Interweaving his eventful biography with carefully selected excerpts from his iconic short stories, novels, and non-fiction, the series reveals the brilliant, ambitious, charismatic, and complicated man behind the myth, and the art he created.
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Letters to Eloisa
Title: Letters to Eloisa
Character: Self
Released: March 8, 2020
Type: Movie
The story of José Lezama Lima and his rise as a literary figure in Cuba and his tragic end, alone and silenced in his Havana home.
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Mario y los perros
Title: Mario y los perros
Character: Himself - Writer
Released: June 28, 2019
Type: Movie
An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.
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El Quijote desde la platea
Title: El Quijote desde la platea
Character: Self - Writer
Released: April 22, 2019
Type: Movie
How Don Quixote de la Mancha, the immortal character created by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605, has been depicted in cinema, television, cartoons, theater, opera, ballet and other artistic disciplines. An adventure that began more than four hundred years ago in the pages of a book and is far from coming to an end.
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A Philosopher in the Arena
Title: A Philosopher in the Arena
Character: Self
Released: February 1, 2019
Type: Movie
After his retirement, french philosopher and bullfighting enthusiast Francis Wolff decides to embark on a journey to France, Spain and Mexico joined by two mexican filmmakers who hardly know anything about bullfighting, a culture whose days seem to be numbered. During their road trip, they encounter numerous personalities with whom they reflect on mankind’s relationship with animals and nature, but most importantly on our relationship with death and the meaning of the ultimate journey: life itself.
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El corazón del Teatro Real
Title: El corazón del Teatro Real
Character: Himself
Released: September 23, 2018
Type: Movie
Documentary about an emblematic institution of the Spanish Arts, Madrid's Teatro Real, or Royal Theatre, released to celebrate it's 2nd centenary anniversary.
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Title: Skavlan
Character: Self - Guest
Released: January 16, 2009
Type: TV
Skavlan is a Norwegian-Swedish television talk show hosted by Norwegian journalist Fredrik Skavlan. It premiered in Sweden on Sveriges Television in January 2009, and the first guests to appear on the show were former Prime Minister of Sweden Göran Persson and his wife Anitra Steen. On 8 May 2009, it was announced that Skavlan had been renewed for a second season. It was also announced that the show would no longer only be produced by SVT in Sweden; Skavlan would now be partly produced in Norway by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The first twelve episodes of Skavlan's second season were produced by SVT in Sweden, and the remaining twelve by NRK in Norway. Skavlan speaks Norwegian and his dialog is therefore subtitled in Swedish in Sweden, even though the two languages are quite similar and mutually intelligible. If the persons being interviewed by Skavlan are Swedish, he often tells them to let him know if they do not understand what he is saying. Swedish novelist Jan Guillou has criticized SVT for subtitling the program, stating "there is no need for that. If the host had been Danish, subtitling would have been necessary, but with a Norwegian host it does not make any sense."
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Title: De pé a pá
Character: Self
Released: January 7, 1996
Type: TV
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Las alturas de Macchu Picchu
Title: Las alturas de Macchu Picchu
Character: Narrator (voice)
Released: October 8, 1981
Type: Movie
The historical musical made in the Inca citadel in 1981 with texts by Pablo Neruda and music of The Jaivas. Special Guest: Mario Vargas Llosa in the presentation.
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Title: Apostrophes
Character: Self
Released: January 10, 1975
Type: TV
Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.