The foundation in Madrid of the Institute of Investigations and Cinematographic Experiences (IIEC) in 1947, has been the most important event in the history of Spanish cinema. From there would come directors such as Luis García Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura, Miguel Picazo, José Luis Borau, Mario Camus, Antonio Mercero and Víctor Erice. Through their first film practices, we will learn about the history of the school and an entire country.

The early days of the future genius of Spanish cinema Luis García Berlanga, from his birth in Valencia in 1921 to his departure to Madrid in 1947 to become a filmmaker.

Documentary about Spanish director Luis García Berlanga's "The Executioner" (1963)

The story of Enrique Herreros (1903-1977), cartoonist, advertiser, poster designer, talent manager, actor, producer and filmmaker, and the most daring of mountaineers; the man who, along with his companions from the so-called “other Generation of '27,” brought Hollywood to Madrid's Gran Vía, turning a grey and sinister post-war city into the capital of an incipient and ambitious cultural industry.

A walk through the work of Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010) that is neither a documentary nor a narrative movie, but a tribute to one of the greatest directors of Spanish cinema. Anything can happen: the performers are not themselves, but their characters; there are no interviews, but greetings; a series of entrances and exits. A joyful reunion, a celebration of life.

A documentary on the revolutionary life and career of director Juan Antonio Bardem, including interviews with many of his colleagues, including Luis Garcia Berlanga.

How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)

Carmen leaves her husband Julio to go live with an intellectual who has made a career in the United States. While, Julio goes away to live of rent to house of an aristocrat come to less. After meeting several colorful characters, Julio decides to recover Carmen.

A young man who likes the good life and easy money gets a proposition to represent a shady business company in Europe.

A set of nine stories whose central theme is eroticism. The different directors of the film deal from philosophical aspects to others that are almost pornographic, but always with a common denominator: sensuality.

Barcelona 1967. The pop culture revolution. Jordi (Patrick Bauchau) is a rich playboy who runs around with a bunch of high-end hippies, smoking, drinking, dancing and daydreaming about Tuset Street, an effort to develop a popular street in the newer section of Barcelona after the models of Haight Ashbury Street in San Francisco and Carnaby Street in London. Jordi and his gang represent the new Barcelona, wealthy, artificial and striving for imported sophistication. On the older side of the city is El Paralelo, the theater district. At El Molino, one of its many music halls, performs Violeta (Sara Montiel), a showgirl in the old style tradition who supplements her singing income with prostitution. Somehow Violeta represents the old values, the "real world" living along side an artificial creation such as Tuset.

In the Easter holidays of 1967, three friends come to Torremolinos willing to flirt and experience strong emotions. Contact with a new environment, in which while some find the lies that hide behind the luxury and splendor and dangers that accompany life easier, others find true love.

Lucas, typical average Spaniard, shy, gray and repressed, is married to sanctimonious Enriqueta, so he is always aware of other women, although the couple are already parents of nine children, which is why Lucas will do the unspeakable to convince his wife to take the contraceptive pill, something practically sinful for a practicing Catholic like Enriqueta.

Ricardo is an executive who has great success with women and behaves almost like a play-boy. His wife, Carmen, an attractive housewife without children, it feels ignored by him and seeks solace from her mother, who proposes Carmen a change in the way she acts in order to do not lose permanently her husband or even fall into madness.

Initially a made-to-order documentary on Spain, the film becomes an open-ended work-in-the-making about the creative process. “Settling in the Spanish capital to make a documentary, Hanoun sketches out for us the different steps involved in making a film. The author turns his hesitations, his doubts and difficult working conditions into the constituents of his work”. (Raphaël Bassan)

This excellent short film written by the magnificent filmmaker duo of Luis García Berlanga and screenwriter Rafael Azcona was to be part of a series entitled Los Pícaros (The Rogues) which was never continued. These two artists were responsible for such masterpieces of Spanish cinema as Plácido and El verdugo (The Executioner). Here, Berlanga and Azcona collaborated for the first time, setting the stage for the post-war "Berlanguiana" vision that would develop. José Luis López Vázquez plays Julián, a seedy swindler, who with his cronies tries to sell a streetcar to a rich but naive farmer, a newcomer to the city. High jinx ensue. With this film begins the great stage of Berlanga's filmmaking in which he mixes a little social criticism and notes of anti-clericalism with a great deal of farce.